Category: CHURCH & MINISTRY
Just As I Have Loved You: Loving Like Jesus Did Before the Cross
The night before Jesus was crucified, during his upper room discourse, he said this to his disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). His example...
Should I Expect to Be Pastored?
I attended a conference years ago and stayed in the home of some local church members. The church hosting the conference had grown extremely large, with Sunday attendance in the thousands. The family I stayed with spoke of former days when their main teaching pastor wasn’t...
The Best Conversation I Ever Had
I am surprised that after so many decades I still remember one remarkable conversation as the best I’ve ever had outside of my immediate family. I’ve often reflected on it with amazement. A cousin by marriage met me in a restaurant in a suburb outside of...
Division — More Harmful Than You Think!
We don’t create unity among God’s people. That was already accomplished at the cross when Jesus died to “create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15). In the Ephesian context, Paul was speaking of the unity that comes...
How A Church, and a Believer, Starts and Stays
You might find this surprising, but the greetings that begin Ephesians help us to think about the birth of the church in Ephesus, about church planting today, and even about our individual conversions. Here are those verses: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will...
Why Not Skip Church Meetings?
More evangelicals skip church meetings than attend them. That’s a fact . . . an embarrassing one. One leader claims even the FBI could not find many of them. Some churches have decided to take action to recover the inactive only to find that their church...
God’s Wisdom in the Martyrdom of Even Young, Eager, Flourishing Believers
If you read a biography about John and Betty Stam, you will be impressed with their enthusiasm for Christ before they were ever on the mission field (serving with China Inland Mission ). They met at a CIM prayer meeting while students at Moody Bible Institute...
The Final Trip Around the Sun
Well, it’s the new year. We made it around the sun again. The inhabitants of Earth make the full circuit once every year—365.25 days, or 365 days and 6 hours (which explains why we observe Leap Year and add a day every four years). If you...
Come to Jesus…Right Now!
Perhaps you have heard the gospel before. But you have not yet come to Jesus or believed in him to save you. What can you do? First, hear the gospel again and be sure you understand who Jesus is, what he has done to deliver sinners,...
So What’s the Problem
A well-known Christian philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, was asked this question: if you had only one hour on a train to tell someone about Christ, what would you do? He answered that he would spend forty-five minutes showing him the problem, and fifteen minutes showing him the...
