Lancaster Bible College Reaccredited

Plus, Theo of Golden, Planned Parenthood, and demographic winter approaching

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Signs and Wonders” is a column that shares thoughts on news items that either do not rise to the level of a news story for MinistryWatch or are slightly (even significantly) outside of our normal charity and philanthropy “beat.” My goal is to be punchy, opinionated, and not to worry much about being slightly off brand. If that is not for you, no hard feelings. But if it is…read on.

Lancaster Bible College Reaccredited. Lots of Christian colleges are struggling, but Lancaster Bible College’s accreditation has been officially reaffirmed by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). Reaccreditation is not an earthshaking achievement. Lots of colleges have to undergo the process every year, but in an age of higher education decline, it’s an achievement worth noting. In its report, the MSCHE team commended LBC for expanding academic programs. The school also claims three years of record total enrollment (2023, 2024 and 2025) and the groundbreaking of a new Global Vision Center, a 15,000-square-foot welcome center and admissions office that President Tommy Kiedis described as the college’s “front porch” or “front door” — the first place visitors encounter when arriving on campus. By the way, LBC earns a “Give With Confidence” rating from MinistryWatch.

Defund Planned Parenthood? Hardly. Remember when GOP politicians promised to “defund Planned Parenthood”? Yeah, me too. But the reality is very different. Planned Parenthood recently released its 2024-2025 annual report, and the nation’s largest abortion provider got a record $832 million in government funds. (That includes federal and state funds.) Funding for Planned Parenthood has gone up every year since 2017. Planned Parenthood performed more than 434,000 abortions last year. That was also a record number. Memo to the GOP and its allies in the pro-life movement: Whatever you’re doing…it ain’t working.

Theo of Golden. My friend Allen Levi’s book “Theo of Golden” continues to be a phenomenon. Here he is talking with Oprah Winfrey. The book has passed 2.5 million in sales, and it has been licensed in 40 countries. Here’s an interview I did with Allen before he was famous. My favorite passage from the interview came when I asked him what he grew on his farm in southwest Georgia. The property was mostly woodland, with no crops. Allen’s answer: “Warren, we grow beauty.”

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Misconceptions About Religion Data. We love data here at MinistryWatch, but we are also aware that data can be misused. Even when it is presented responsibly, it can be misunderstood. That’s why I appreciated Ryan Burge’s recent article about three misconceptions people have about data. I commend the entire article to you, which you can find here. But here are the key points.

First, “The average rate of public opinion change is much slower than people anticipate.” So, if you think this year’s data will be very different from last year’s data…well, think again.

Second, “The average person thinks that THEIR world is THE world.” I often tell people, “It’s dangerous to generalize from personal experience.” We’re saying the same thing.

Finally, “The average American is really bad at guessing the size of religious groups.” I think this one is actually a corollary of number two. People tend to think their own tribe is much larger than it is in comparison with others.

Population Collapse Has Massive Consequences. People are finally beginning to pay attention to the coming population collapse and its consequences. My friend Glenn Stanton wrote an excellent analysis of new United Nations data, and his conclusions are sobering. He writes, “In 2023, total global fertility dropped below replacement level for the first time in human history. This puts us on track to reach ‘peak population’ in the coming decades. This has not already happened simply because of ever longer life expectancies in rich and poor countries, what demographers call ‘demographic momentum.’”

To be specific, in 2015, the U.N. said we would “top out” at around 11.3 billion people around the year 2100. Now, the U.N. is saying we’ll top out at just 10.3 billion people in 2080 — 20 years earlier, well within the lifetimes of many people alive today.

We are only just beginning to understand the economic, cultural, and political implications of population decline. Demographer Neil Howe has argued that Russia’s demographic decline may be behind its military aggression. “Demographic decline was supposed to keep Russia at bay. But maybe the opposite is true,” he said.

Columnist and historian Max Boot wrote in the Washington Post, “His [Putin’s] invasion of Ukraine can be seen as a desperate gambit to increase the Russian population at gunpoint.”

Population declines will not only shape geopolitics, but also neighborhoods. What happens to property values when there are not enough people for all the houses we’ve built? What happens to colleges, churches, corporations (and I’m not out of the Cs yet)?

Glenn Stanton reminds us, “God’s first command to humanity is not just to have children. It is to multiply. This means we must do more than merely replace ourselves with two children.”

He continues: “Secular demographers are beating God’s drum here more dynamically than many Christians. That must change, and it can. Children are not just a blessing. They are essential to the future. God’s wisdom on how nature works is far greater than we appreciate. Dismissing that truth is creating problems that even the United Nations is slowly realizing.”

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Readers in Greenville/Spartanburg. I am in the Upstate of South Carolina at the end of August. If you live in Greenville or Spartanburg, reach out to me. I would love to share a meal or a cup of coffee with you. My email is [email protected].