So I had the four guys over for lunch one day; they were all nice guys. I served them a typical Malawian meal: nsima (looks like mashed potatoes but is made from corn and is tasteless and nutritionless) beans and greens. Water to drink. No dessert. They were very polite and appreciative, but I was... Continue Reading

Traumatized Iraqi Christians have also relocated within the country. The predominant flow of refugees has been away from the violence of central and southern Iraq and toward Kurdistan in the north, which had been the historic heartland of the ancient Mesopotamian Christian communities. There the refugees have encountered a somewhat better situation, although not without... Continue Reading

At the same time, if a sense of shortcoming is all that we come away with, then the image we’ll form of God is of a God who is perpetually irritated with us. We’ll consider Him to be a scowling God, a God who is constantly tossing His arms up in the air as if... Continue Reading

While pastors and their wives are wrestling with the issue of how much and which confidential information to share with one another, the general public is shocked . . . shocked to find that we share anything.   Writing this article is scary. When the editors of The Aquila Report asked me to write about... Continue Reading

We seem to live in an age that doesn’t believe that moral training is necessary or even desirable and actually counts the neglect of it as a sign of enlightenment. Unfortunately, as the tragedies that will inevitably result from this approach pile up, instead of demanding a return to prior principles of training, people demand... Continue Reading

Therefore, if you are in Christ, sin is no longer your superior. You don’t have to listen when it says, “Come to me, no one’s looking.” You have been set free to live in the newness of life and enjoy the benefits of having a Savior who was gracious enough to live, die, rise from... Continue Reading

It’s the joyous mystery of my life that this is what I’ve been chosen and gifted to do, and I regularly pray the ardor of ministry will not cause me to lose that joy. Does joy color your ministry? Does it quiet complaint and defend you against weariness or bitterness? Has the beauty of what... Continue Reading

This is also an important moment as Americans consider a simple question: are people of faith no longer welcome as they continue to hold the beliefs they have always held? I believe the trajectory toward greater acceptance of homosexuality will continue. However, there will always be a sizable minority of people, often people of faith,... Continue Reading

Change is needed because there are things in you, or in your ministry situation or relationships, that need to be uprooted or torn down, and if change is actually going to be change, there are new things that need to be planted or built in the place of what was uprooted and torn down.  ... 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