Although many early homeschooling families were Protestant Christians, the original movement itself was ideologically diverse and not inherently religious. In the early years of the movement the most common trait homeschooling families had in common was an embrace of the unconventional and a willingness to be seen as nonconformists in relation to mainstream culture.   On... Continue Reading

Under his leadership, Northland grew from a couple hundred people in 1985 to 20,000 weekly attendees at three locations, and Hunter became an innovative leader among the early wave of pastors building multisite congregations with streaming services.   Joel Hunter, the innovative megachurch pastor who spoke out on the national stage as an evangelical adviser to President... Continue Reading

What I take from Dr. Langberg’s definition is an emphasis on action, the Spirit’s work and the counselor’s work (in self and other). While the epistemological definitions are necessary if we are going to think critically about our work, so to is this action-oriented definition. It reminds us that for all our thinking and theorizing,... Continue Reading

Sometimes I think we read the Bible too stoically. Sometimes I think we forget that the characters in the stories embedded in the Old Testament were people just like us. They had hopes and dreams; they believed and they doubted; they felt joy and experienced despair; they suffered real pain; they didn’t know what was... Continue Reading

God delegates authority as He reigns and rules over His creation. God raises up human governments. It is God who instituted government in the first place (Rom. 13). That’s why Christians are called to honor and pray for the king, pay their taxes, and submit as much as possible to the authorities in all things—because... Continue Reading

This experience gave me a new appreciation for a goal of the church. Christians are of course ambassadors (Eph 6:20; 2 Cor 5:20). But in a deeper sense, the church is our embassy. When Sunday comes and the church gathers, it is a collection of ambassadors coming home. We are not in heaven yet, but as... Continue Reading

“I cared nothing but to love and be loved. But my love went beyond the affection of one mind for another, beyond the arc of the bright beam of friendship. Bodily desire, like a morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists which clouded over and obscured my heart, so that I could... Continue Reading

We need to embrace the God who is found in suffering. He is the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He’s the Lord who was impaled on a cross. We’d rather Jesus be mild-mannered and mild-tempered, and we’d rather listen to him preach about lilies in a field of flowers. We don’t want to go... Continue Reading

The reality is, we spend our lives trying to escape the constraints of our created condition. Opening our eyes to this is a significant breakthrough. To be human is to be a creature, and to be a creature is to be finite. We are not God. We are not in control, and we will not... Continue Reading

The following article is a guest post by Rebecca VanDoodewaard, author of Uprooted: A Guide for Homesick Christians and Your Future ‘Other Half’: It Matters Whom You Marry. She is married to William VanDoodewaard, Professor of Church History at Puritan Theological Seminary. They have four children. During a recent visit, my wife and I discussed these types of issues with... Continue Reading