Helpful articles and encouragement for church leaders and lay members along with information on church activity and circumstances the world over.
Have you ever been under fire? I’m not necessarily referring to being literally shot at by an enemy, although I can attest to the fact that this is not a pleasant experience (having been in a good many “fire fights” while a gunner for a helicopter attack squadron in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam).
There is an axiom in mathematics that a sum cannot be greater than its parts. While I don’t want to argue with it as a principle of mathematics, I know it doesn’t hold in relationships. And relationships can’t be reduced to formulas anyway.
They sat on a bus while she worshiped Jesus.
We live in an evil age. One generation always seems to think it has a monopoly on dissipation and ugly behavior. Perhaps ours is no worse than that of the early church, or that of Gomorrah’s era.
“Let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way” (Romans 14:11).
Growing up male in the days before clearly defined political correctness and finely tuned international sensitivity training, we boys spent much of our free time playing war. Sometimes we were equipped with reasonable facsimiles of firearms, like those carried by real soldiers and cowboys.
Several years ago, I heard the story of Larry Walters, a 33-year-old man who decided he wanted to see his neighborhood from a new perspective. He went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons.
I was raised in northwestern New Mexico, near the four-corners area on the Navajo Indian reservation. From the time I was about 4 or 5 years old until I graduated from high school, this vast area was my home.
We might as well be perfectly honest here and speak very frankly — virtually every congregation, whether large or small, whether “liberal,” “mainstream” or “conservative,” contains a hardened handful who seem to feel “led of God” to criticize and castigate everyone and everything around them.
Bro. Keeble was successful beyond anyone’s expectations! It was not unusual for him to baptize as many as a hundred people in a single gospel meeting.
Okay. We’re at the halfway point of the baseball season. And the Yankees are playing more respectably. So maybe that’s why it occurred to me that a lot of our experience of religion is like baseball.
For some time now I have been concerned about “our” (perhaps only my own) understanding of the “doctrine” of grace. It is true that we, as a people of God, have sometimes not grasped the depth of grace in our preaching and teaching.
After 30 plus years in full time ministry it is difficult for someone like me to not be personally offended at those who come into the fellowship of the body of Christ and then, for whatever reasons, decide to drop out. Amazingly, those often given the most attention and fussed over to a fault are the ones who might drop out faster than others.
So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! (1 Corinthians 10:12)
As we survey the terrain stretched before us, looking carefully for the best route to the Promised Land (one that avoids the dreaded swamps of extremism as well as the life-threatening bogs of mediocrity), we first examine the courses plotted by the pilgrims who have preceded us. Why stray off the beaten path?