From Dr. Miles Gresham, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Covenant Theological Seminary: Dr. Mark Dalbey has been a faithful example of wise and godly leadership as President of Covenant Seminary the past eight years. His calm and humble demeanor paired with an unwavering trust in the Lord have been a source of steady... Continue Reading

Church growth experts have long warned that church sanctuaries that are 80% full are for all practical purposes maxed out and, and churches that reach that level of saturation will begin to decline. Will churches need to rethink that percentage to a lower number in the future. Will seating need to be altered to allow... Continue Reading

The center of this concrete reality is the local church. The universal church is present within each local expression of the church. There is no universal church without the concrete local church. The local church embodies the universal, and not the other way around. This is evident by the fact that there is no universal... Continue Reading

I’d rather see the performance of Sibelius’s violin concerto in person than listen to a recording. When face-to-face experiences are impossible, I am thankful for the technology that bridges the gap–whether correspondence or phone calls or video calls. But life is better in person. This fact should not surprise us, for the Word of God... Continue Reading

As I consider the stress and anxiety I feel deep within, and as I speak to others, I have been encouraging them as I’ve been encouraging myself, to understand that some of this must stem directly from what, in the providence of God, has been denied to us in this time. We should not expect... Continue Reading

The conviction is that as soon as we are a gathered community again, whenever that may be, we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper. We are already planning—with anticipation and hope—what that first regathered Sunday worship service will look like. And it will be joyously appropriate for that worship to picture our tangible union through the... Continue Reading

 I know what I like to believe about our church, but if it’s not an objective doctrinal issue (that your old church denies and we affirm or vice versa) it is a subjective matter. ‘My last minister wasn’t very pastoral’ is hard because, much as I’d love to believe our church would be better, fact is... Continue Reading

Women are caught in the tug of war between two views. Both sides seem fully convinced they’re right, and there’s no middle ground. Women are made to choose their priority: career or family. It’s interesting to me, as a mom of boys, that men don’t have to make a similar choice. My sons, for example,... Continue Reading

Reflecting Paul’s warning in Ephesians 4:14, the Puritans knew that if men and women remained immature in their knowledge of Christ, they would be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning…” The Puritans understood what Paul taught—that sound doctrine was the antidote the world... Continue Reading

As I listened, I found several common threads (click here for the complete notes from every sermon). These threads will make up most this article—a state of American preaching, if you will. Most of it will be negative. But first: what positive feedback would I give these sermons?   What’s the preaching like in America’s biggest churches? That’s the... Continue Reading