Now, the old farmer still rolls up his sleeves each morning, still picks up his tools, still swings the bag of seed over his shoulders, still asks the Master where he needs the seed sown. Harvests have come—and gone. Farming is not for the weak of heart or the soft in spirit.   There once... Continue Reading

This morning I was going to write my resignation. This afternoon I had an overdue deep sleep. Tonight I’m rehearsing the gospel anew and tearing lies out by the roots.   After putting it off for months, I finally got around to writing up my letter of resignation. Well, to be honest, I haven’t got... Continue Reading

One of the greatest needs wives and children have — and all the more in our relentlessly distracting age — is dad’s countercultural attentiveness. Perhaps human attention never has been more valuable. Today the largest corporations in the world no longer compete for oil, but for human attention. And when attention is short and scarce, one... Continue Reading

My concern, of course, is that way too many of us function primarily undercover. We fail to engage often as followers of Christ. However, different than FAMs who function best and keep everyone else safer if they stay undercover, when we do that as Christians, we actually jeopardize those around us.   Federal Air Marshals... Continue Reading

This important question deserves a much longer answer than the one I will briefly present in this article. Here I want to take up one particular aspect of this question, which will undoubtedly be asked at some point in the life of a Reformed church: should we only be singing the psalms? Certain church orders... Continue Reading

Since there is a danger in God’s church for wolves to come with false doctrine, God has established under-shepherds who are responsible to protect the flock. Paul tells the Ephesians elders: “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, to shepherd the church... Continue Reading

If we know God then we know he has been incredibly merciful to us, and our gratitude manifests itself in our obeying God’s commands and purifying our lives of sin; because we know what sin cost Jesus, we therefore hate it and want nothing more to do with it. To me, this is perhaps the... Continue Reading

Thirteen years later, the church has grown, and so have the people. I sat with the pastor and listened over coffee to what God has been doing. It’s still messy. It’s still an almost invisible church. The room can hold a hundred no matter how they configure the church. You would probably never visit that... Continue Reading

Every soul that crosses our path in church leadership should be viewed with great dignity. In the works of the church father John Chrysostom known as the Six Books of the Priesthood, he urges pastors to think upon how the devil wages war on the human soul. The immediate and eternal impact of the harm of... Continue Reading

As a young seminarian, I frequently heard Sinclair Ferguson speak about the impact that Still had on his own life and preparation for ministry. As he expressed affectionate gratitude for the ways in which his mentor poured into him, welling up in my own heart was a longing to have that same blessed experience.  ... Continue Reading