At the end of the day, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with IQ and smarts and charismatic gifting. It comes with the wisdom of trying at something for more than 30 years and all the failure that this entails. We may love the stories of wild success that seemingly find overnight at a young age, but... Continue Reading

Things were so much simpler when the State was obliged to respect the religious conscience of all Americans, rather than seizing the power to weight some of us in the balance, and find us wanting.   Remember: tyranny is whimsical. That doesn’t merely describe a cackling lunatic despot handing out life and death according to... Continue Reading

If you are a pastor, parent, Bible study leader, Sunday school teacher, or anyone who instructs others in the faith, don’t assume your kids or your people know these things. Repeat then. Sing them. Pray them. Ask people to say what you just said. Make them raise their hands. Make them repeat after you. Do... Continue Reading

So if perchance U2 and One Direction do not unite and thus revolutionise your church life this year through ushering in the millennium, you may have to fall back on those hackneyed biblical staples, the ordinary means of grace. In that desperate situation, these are two books which you will find most helpful.   It... Continue Reading

We can no longer afford the conceit that our helpful and powerful technologies—for all their help and all their power—come without remarkable human costs. “But these days, our problems with the Net are becoming too distracting to ignore … The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind.... Continue Reading

When it comes to giving, the key is to meet your donors where they are, and a lot of them are on their phones non-stop. Making giving convenient for them through a channel they are familiar with will help boost your giving. And while giving should be convenient for your donors, it must also be... Continue Reading

According to Smith, “the language and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward.”   One of the stories from the... Continue Reading

Although none of the major proposed restrictions were placed on the charitable deduction, the “Pease” limitations—phasing out deductions for charitable giving, mortgage interest, and state and local taxes for high-bracket taxpayers—were reinstated and made permanent beginning 2013 to the disappointment of many in the charitable sector.   Late on the first day of the new... Continue Reading

Since it appears as though God would use your blood to sign his truth, there is nothing better than for you to prepare yourself to that end, beseeching him so to subdue you to his good pleasure, that nothing may hinder you from following whithersoever he shall call.     Quotes from Tracts and Letters... Continue Reading

My concern is that Reformed folk are tempted to become the sanctification police and scope out everything that is said on the subject, analyzing it to its tiniest minutiae, as if the doctrine itself is at stake.  The Reformed tradition is not completely uniform on this doctrine (though there is a unified core belief about sanctification).... Continue Reading