Anthony Ball

I laughed way harder than I should have at this 😂

Today, a different spirit arises. It claims Christ while diminishing his authority. It chants biblical sufficiency but literacy is in free fall. It emphasizes cultural conflict rather than gospel reconciliation. It ignores the sole mediation of Christ and exalts clerical power.

@ChefRobCo John Fream was my teenage pastor who was instrumental in discipling me. Whatever you think about his verbiage or strategy, the fact is he is a Godly man and pastor, who I know first hand. Maybe take a break from the shotgun approach of slamming real people you’ve never met 🤷🏻‍♂️

So tired of all the Easter Messages and these stooges trying to out do one another with 80,000 eggs hidden, photo booths, etc. This guy just compared the Resurrection of Christ to the “ultimate spiking the ball in the end zone”! 🤦🏻😫

@ImKingGinger You need to check out “The Insanity of God” documentary film by @NikRipken! One of the very few Christian movies that is excellently done and has broad appeal both geographically and demographically.

The Truth About Why Christian Movies are So Bad. I’ve spent the last four years building a streaming platform and talking to people at the very top of the faith-based entertainment industry. Studio heads. Distributors. Producers. Investors. And I’ve come to a conclusion that I think is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Christian movies are bad on purpose. The talent is out there. I’ve met them. I’ve sat with them at 3am over whiskey and cigars listening to pitches that should have been picked up immediately. So that left a question that any Christian filmmaker could quickly answer. If the talent is there, why is everything so mediocre? It starts with an avatar named Bookstore Betty. I’m not making that up. When the faith-based film industry was being built out, it was done in partnership with Christian bookstore executives. They weren’t asking “how do we make great cinema.” They were asking “who walks into our stores and how do we sell them a movie the same way we sell them a devotional.” The target was a 35 year old woman. The tone, the casting, the conflict resolution, the soft lighting, all of it was reverse-engineered to appeal to Betty. Not to a general audience. Not to men. Not to teenagers. Just Betty. Every major Christian film you can think of relies on distribution deals with secular studios. The same studios that blacklisted almost everyone who worked on The Passion of the Christ and refused to distribute Kirk Cameron's Pro Life movie. Think about that. Passion made over $600 million on a $30 million budget. The most obvious play would have been to duplicate that movie hundreds of times like it was the MCU. But instead of greenlighting more, Hollywood blacklisted the people involved. So what did they do instead? They set up a system where they get to be the gatekeepers. They only greenlight the safest, most formulaic, most non-threatening stuff possible. Because if Christian films ever started consistently competing with mainstream entertainment, those studios would have a real problem. So they make sure that never happens. And the church helps them do it. Christian movies don’t need word of mouth. They don’t need to be good. They need pastors to bulk-buy tickets. You make a movie with a “message,” market it to churches, and pastors subsidize the whole thing by buying hundreds of tickets to hand out on Sunday. You don’t have to compete in a fair market when your distribution model is guilt-driven generosity. And the funding is even more rigged. Most of these films are funded through Donor Advised Funds, which means donors get a tax write-off for their “investment” regardless of whether the movie makes a dollar. There’s no market pressure to make something good. The donors got their deduction. The studio got their budget. And Betty got another movie about a woman who finds a journal in the attic. What would happen if someone actually came along and made faith-based content that created pop culture instead of reacting to it? I think it would instantly expose how low-effort the current industry is. It would be like when Uber showed up and embarrassed the taxi industry overnight. The monopoly only survives because nobody has disrupted it yet. The talent is there. The audience is there. The only thing missing is capital that wants disruption instead of a tax write-off.

I confess: the mainstreaming of hate aimed at people who adopt children of another race, by so-called "Christians," has had a radicalizing effect on me. Anyone who tolerates people who do this, let alone actively participate in it, is not fit for a pulpit, nor to govern. Period.

We want to personally invite you to join us. On Aug. 28, 2026, we’ll gather in Arlington, TX for the FREE 10th anniversary of The Insanity of God—to remember the persecuted church and the cost of following Jesus. RSVP today: nikripken.com/10 — Nik & Ruth Ripken

Around the world, many believers live out their faith in the face of pressure, loss, and opposition. Again and again their stories reveal the same truth: courage grows where faith is rooted deeply in Christ. #FollowJesus #ChristianFaith #PersecutedChurch #FaithAndCourage

Come, friends, it is story time. Let me tell you a story. As most of you know, my wife has stage 4 lung cancer. With metronomic regularity, my wife has to have scans of her lungs to make sure her tumors are not growing, and the chemo she is on is working. I tend to forget when the scan days are. They stress me out. Then I wind up forgetting I have to be off work and take my wife to her appointments. Twice, the way I remembered scan days is because @Mike_Pence reached out to say that he and Karen had been praying for Christy and knew her scan appointments were coming up. Yep, the former Vice President of the United States, once while actively serving as VP, was my reminder that my wife's scans were upcoming. He and his wife are regular prayer warriors for my wife. I say all this to note that in the past few weeks, finally having gotten tired of the relentless bullying from the very online @BaptistLeaders E.D. @WilliamWolfe towards other Christians, I spoke out, and now William regularly tries to shame me into not speaking up and not speaking out about faith issues. I have an actual (largely harmless) stalker and William is rapidly becoming a second one. William even attacked the former President of the Southern Baptist Convention for pointing out @BaptistLeaders could have worked to resolve issues at a Baptist convention, but instead chose to complain while doing nothing. A few days ago, while publicly and privately chastizing me as a slob, hypocrite, and fake Christian who needs to repent, William sent me the note attached hereto. Notice how, for a guy worried about Christianity, it was all political. He is not really concerned about my faith or Christianity. He's concerned about politics, which is why he is not very successful operating within the church. And, frankly, I'd rather be on an island with "Mike Pence types" who pray for my wife than on an island with the theobros who keep failing to turn Christ's church into an avenue for politics. When you hold yourself out as some sort of godly Christian and think Mike Pence, an actual Christian of strong convictions, is a pejorative, you are actually the problem. The @AmReformer project is doomed to fail with very hyperonline guys like William leading @BaptistLeaders because actual Christians can smell the grift and sense the heartlessness of someone way more worried about Twitter ratios and "Never Trump" than the work of the church. If your project is measuring success by the metrics of how many times you have ratioed someone, you are not actually living in the real world and need to touch some grass. It actually is funny the money spent on a project to change the church that has actually done more to alienate churches from the underlying project just because the face of the project spends more time in rank jackassery towards Christians than any other group.

Chuck Norris knew who wrote Hebrews

This is reformed mysticism, in no way reflects the way of Jesus’s teaching, and has no scriptural backing. This makes the pastor the priest and mediator, dispensing grace gatekeeping God’s truth. Almost as if we’ve gone full circle back to Catholicism 🤷🏻‍♂️

Reserve your seat today!! 🙌🏽

Of all the learning methods, lecture is the least effective (5% retention) of them all. If this is the case why do we still do so much of it in the church?

I love the local church. I drove on backroads tonight and passed at least 7 or 8 churches with parking lots full for Wednesday night church. Prayer, Bible study, fellowship, happening in each one. Stuff like that fires me up.

"Do you lift?" Bro I lift my eyes up to the hills from where my help comes every day.

Bart Barber is a national treasure

It’s so much easier to look away than to engage. But what might happen if we didn’t? We shared a simple, practical story on the blog—feel free to take a few minutes to read it 👉 nikripken.com/just-like-me-e… #NikRipkenMinistries #Testimonies #Ramadan #Evangelism #NRMBlog

New conspiracy theory: iPhone keyboard keeps getting worse to incentivize you to use talk-to-text so they can get enough audio samples to AI your voice for unspecified nefarious purposes.

Also remember that communion should be the most joyful part of the worship service. There should be lots of smiling faces, occasional laughter, and happy, squealing children. It's not a time to scrunch your eyes up and think about what a terrible sinner you are.

Three verses before the one John Piper quoted is this one: Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.  (Leviticus 19:31, ESV) The people angry at @JohnPiper have said nothing about the President’s Surgeon General nominee advocating the use of mediums and hallucinogenics to connect to the spirit realm. These are idol worshippers. Shame on all of you.

What if one small step changed everything? Evelyn chose to smile at her Muslim neighbors instead of looking away—and found new friends. During Ramadan, what if we stepped toward others with the love of Christ? Read more: nikripken.com/just-like-me-e…