Ministry will break you. It will break your self-reliance, your expectations, your emotional and mental balance, and it will break your heart, over and over again. And all of this is good. Ministry is never the making of you, if “you” is a successful, fruitful version of the sinner who started out in the pastorate.   ... Continue Reading

There should be no predictable theme that emerges in your preaching every week (unless it’s Jesus!) There are times though when an appropriately-edited personal story can be an effective hook to start a message, or a dramatic way to land the homiletical plane at the end. You may need to change some details such as geography or... Continue Reading

I think Lewis would agree with the sentiment of the quote. I trust he wouldn’t have wanted someone else to put those words in his mouth, but I’m sure he’ll not hold it against me when I meet him! Now, there are in fact many quotations online that are falsely attributed to various people. The most... Continue Reading

The sword comes up plenty in our Bibles. I stumbled across it when reading Romans 8 recently. Paul exclaims “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Rom 8:35) Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ! But what do our... Continue Reading

“It feels good. Our relationship to God becomes closer,” Farzana says. She doesn’t want to give her last name because she says her family in Iran might face persecution for her conversion. Her family knows she is a convert and they’re scared for their own safety inside Iran.   In a hotel conference room in... Continue Reading

I was stunned. It was the first time that I saw death without it first having been made up by the undertaker. Yes, I had been to a number of funerals. And I have heard people say things like, “He looks so good, so natural.” Once someone whispered to me, “She looks so beautiful.  She... Continue Reading

“Yesterday I was with about 20 guys for a wild-game feast. As far as I can tell, in the circles I circulate in–places like Patheos for instance–I am the only minister who gives men like these much thought. They’re men who live on the periphery–but most people depend on them for the basic conveniences of modern life. There... Continue Reading

We feel we ought to view the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, but we’re not quite sure why or how. It seems like such a crunch of gears. But is it? Perhaps we’d be helped by a simple framework for how Christ is at the heart of the Scriptures: he is patterned, promised, and present from Genesis onward.... Continue Reading

In this short article, I would like to consider how a more traditional understanding of God’s immutability might be illumined and reinforced by the doctrine of divine simplicity. While setting forth the relationship between immutability and simplicity will not allay the concerns of all critics, it can shed light on why a stronger doctrine of God’s... Continue Reading

According to James, there is nothing wrong with being religious. The noun translated “religion” also means “worship.” There is a “pure and undefined” religion. There is a God ordained worship (Col 2:23) and there is “will-worship.” What is wrong with a religion of salvation by works is not that it is a religion but that... Continue Reading