Articles
Negative News, Growing Churches
Pastors, If you’re listening to the mainstream media and their negative news, you’d never know that churches across America are growing at such an encouraging rate. Unless... ...You noticed the parking lots on the way to your own church — they’re packed! (Even my own...
How to Improve Accessibility for Seniors at Your Church
Even though religious entities are exempt from ADA rules, you want your church to be inclusive to all individuals. Making your church accessible to seniors may be a costly investment upfront, but it will be well worth it to the elderly members of your congregation. We...
Bible Or Theology: Which Is Infallible?
Infallibility. Does the word feel dense and tired and kind of irrelevant to you, like a library book that’s sat on the shelf too long? It does to me. But it speaks of that which cannot fail us. Literally, it means “the inability to fail.” It speaks of that which can...
Sanctify Your Achilles’ Heel
One of the mightiest heroes of Ancient Greece was the famed Achilles. According to legend his mother, Thetis, held him by his heel and dipped him into the river Styx in an attempt to make him invincible. Unfortunately for Achilles, the heel by which his mother held...
The Gift of Pastoral Leadership
Recently I was in Quebec, ministering among French Canadian baptists. I was stunned to learn that in a denomination of roughly 100 churches, almost three dozen are without a pastor. What a different context than many of us are familiar with! In a place where the...
Revival happening now!
"As revival closes in on the one-week mark at Asbury University, reports are circulating of other colleges and universities where revival fires have ignited. As of Tuesday, groups of students from at least 22 higher education institutions..." Read the full article...
Moving from Spiritual Insecurity to Spiritual Confidence
Spiritual Confidence Plenty of experts teach strategies to become confident in our bodies, confident in dating, confident in professional environments, confident in social settings, and more. However, few people teach us how to become spiritually confident. Since our...
How The Gospel Enables and Empowers Sexual Purity
Growing up in a churchgoing family, Kate had been taught that maintaining her sexual purity for marriage was of “utmost importance.” She had been taught many rules and regulations, but without being given any reasons for them. Having sex outside of marriage was a sin,...
The Bible’s Investment Plan
The Bible contains more than 2,300 verses that deal with money. Jesus talks about money in eleven of his thirty-nine parables. This topic matters to God. What he says in the Bible is what we’re called to live by. Invest in God’s Word first. Invest in God’s work...
Liturgical Renewal
In the aftermath of the recent fragmentation and decline of the church, a growing number of evangelicals in the United States are seeking to find identity and spiritual renewal in the retrieval of ancient church tradition for contemporary faith, especially in the area...
Doubt Your Doubts
When we are seeking to understand something as big as God, it’s normal to have doubts along the way. We don’t typically have much choice in whether we struggle with some doubts in this process, but we do make choices in how to deal with the doubt. My claim is that...
This I Believe
In every generation, we face the danger of longing for the past while fearing the future. And this mix of nostalgia and fear leads us into a state of complacency—a mission-less faith. We file in and out of the sanctuary week after week, content to recite the same...
Being and Becoming
I love the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I realize that we live in an age where fewer are making that statement. However, I love the church. I am painfully aware that those who don’t love the church, who wish the church would disappear forever, feel that way in...
Why Are Women Leaving the Church?
Women have always attended church at higher rates than men, but that may be changing. From 2003 to 2019, women’s attendance dropped from 48 percent to 31 percent. In that same period, men’s church attendance dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent, meaning that women...
Do Christians Really Need to Attend Church?
It’s one of the most common statements you’ll hear regarding church attendance: “I don’t need church to have a relationship with God.” What’s at the heart of this contentious remark? While one can certainly “have a relationship” of some kind with God without attending...
Discipline, Discipline, Discipline
A 2007 study showed that 88 percent of people who set New Year’s resolutions failed, although 52 percent of the study’s participants were confident of success at the beginning.1 If you are tired of trying to renew your mind and get closer to God only to fail in the...
Beginning with God
One of the ways I got around sabbath-keeping for so long is that I dismissed it as “a Jewish thing” that had very little to do with me. It was certainly a nice idea, but I wasn’t convinced it was something important from God for me. I am not alone in this; it seems...
Guided By My Shepherd
I will fear no evil, for you are with me. (Psalm 23:4) Psalm 23 is a good word for every stage of our lives. In it, David reminds us that “he guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3). My Good Shepherd has it in his heart to guide me along the...
Self-Care and Mourning: How to Overcome Grief Without Losing Yourself in the Process
Even though all of us struggle with grief at one time or another, we all tend to feel as though we’re facing it alone – and along with the grief of missing a loved one, we often also experience chills, aches, sleeplessness, and fatigue. Some days, it may even feel...
Teaching Your Teenager to Ask Questions
Success in life is greatly impacted by how we relate to people. If teenagers do not learn positive social skills at home, where will they learn them? The reality is that many adults lose jobs, marriages, and mental health because they never learned how to relate to...
