Give your pastors margin to minister to their families. Children need their father. But many leaders will be tempted to neglect their families to meet the unending needs of the church. Carping and demanding church members will make that temptation even greater. Even as a church member, you can encourage your pastors to care for their... Continue Reading

First of all, it’s good for me to open my eyes and see what I’m up against. I may think that it would be nice to pretend like none of these dangerous ideas and doctrines will affect my house or my church, but that would be horribly naïve. It really doesn’t take long at all... Continue Reading

Still, are the Millennials right to give up on marriage? No. Why? Because God instituted marriage for a reason. In this fallen world nothing will ever be perfect. One of the more basic reasons that we’ve lost faith in marriage as an institution is that we have been sold a bill of goods about what... Continue Reading

We have failed, at many times and in many ways, to be the kind of friend that God would have us be. We need the grace of God to forgive us, grace to bring blessing wherever we go (Proverbs 11:25), grace to be humble (Proverbs 11:2, James 4:6), grace to stop criticizing (Proverbs 19:11), grace to... Continue Reading

“Occasionally a preacher is just so smart, just so almost-as-smart-as-God, that they have an axe to grind. They get up to preach and just can’t wait to say how wrong the Bible is, how primitive/ignorant/undemocratic were its pre-modern authors. Their sermons begin with pride, and end as a Toyota Prius commercial.”   You’re sitting in... Continue Reading

“It’s not that people haven’t heard the Gospel. Rather, it’s that they’ve heard it in shorthand. They’ve settled for insufficient explanations of inexhaustible truths. They’ve embraced a canon that is simply a hodge-podge of catchphrases, moral stories, and isolated teachings. And then we send them on mission trips, or door-to-door?” God spoke. In Genesis 1,... Continue Reading

“So, the question remains, where are all the people who once thronged the Crystal Cathedral. The Charlottesville correspondent explains to the American scholars: “They are at home, having their self-esteem puffed up by a new breed of prosperity-Gospel preacher, including Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and T.D. Jakes.”   A few months ago, the American Scholar... Continue Reading

God’s reconciling peace means nothing until we know we are separated from God by the offense of our sin. Some say that sinners, especially those with no church background, are already well-versed in their own misery and have no need of being shown the truth of their sin. Certainly we should be gentle in our... Continue Reading

Given this cultural context, how should Christians deal with the inevitable confrontation over the Christian claim that Jesus is the only way to heaven?  For one, we need to clarify that this is not simply a claim that we are making on behalf of Christianity. It is not as if Christians enjoy their religion so much that... Continue Reading

Unhealthy churches have numbers of leaders and/or members who do not practice 1 Corinthians 13 in their local congregations. These persons tend to seek their picture of an ideal church rather than loving their current church, her leaders, and her members. They are thus constantly comparing some aspect of the church with some other church... Continue Reading