Ed Stetzer had the pleasure of hosting Francis Chan on The Exchange recently, in partnership with the Exponential Conference. It was quite an interview.

"Elevator speech" is a term from the 1990s. In the early days of Web development, aspiring innovators prepared themselves for brief encounters with venture capitalists. If they could present their vision in the short span of an elevator ride, they might get the capital needed to bring vision to reality. Is that what Jesus did in Luke 4:14-21? Was this Jesus' "elevator speech" or something more?

Much of the current division within the church comes from overemphasizing one trait over the other. Some churches tend to emphasize love, whereas others tend to prioritize holiness. But neither is negotiable. Both are essential for living the Christian life.

When we examine Scripture, we do not look to find Christ in the text. We look at the text through the lens of Christ. Is it necessary to mention Jesus in every sermon? Yes. If Jesus doesn’t show up in the sermon, then it isn’t preaching. Not really.

Jesus dignifies those with and without privilege, refusing to let both groups remain either passive recipients of unmerited benefits or passive victims. He is the privileged Son of God who gave it up and took on victimhood, through which he saved the world. Christ, unsurprisingly, takes the black-and-white view of privilege-and-victimhood and renders it a far richer and more nuanced picture than anything we could have imagined.

Francis Chan bared some of his struggles with doubt and being a model disciple of Jesus Christ Tuesday during the opening session of the 2013 Exponential Conference attended by thousands in Orlando, Fla. "I noticed that there were areas in my life that started to slip," said Chan, identifying some of those things as a loss of boldness, confidence and some of his faith that the Holy Spirit could enter people's lives and change them.

One of the most striking scientific discoveries about religion in recent years is that going to church weekly is good for you. Religious attendance — at least, religiosity — boosts the immune system and decreases blood pressure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life. The reason for this is not entirely clear.

Remember the student at Florida Atlantic University who complained when his instructor asked members of the class to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper and then step on it? Putting it that baldly makes it easy to understand why media reports of the incident were followed by expressions of outrage (from the Florida governor on down) and by complaints that, once again, college students were being taught to scorn religion and family values. In fact, nothing of the kind was happening. The instructor, Deandre Poole, identifies himself as a strong Christian.

You and I need to think about the implications of what we believe, or what we don't believe, or what we refuse to believe. Sometimes we have these little dangling threads in what we believe and we just haven't considered them properly. What the apostle Paul does in his letter to the Corinthian church is say, "Let's think about what will happen if we say that dead people don't ever come back to life. Let's just ponder that for a few minutes." He begins to tug on that loose thread.

No religion in the world can match the claims of Christianity. What differentiates it from other religions is its declaration that Christ literally rose from the grave. There have always been those who have sought to debunk the resurrection of Christ, but whatever arguments have been offered fail miserably.