Category: Church Life
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...
FIRST Be Reconciled
Have you ever discovered after-the-fact that you had offended another Christian? Maybe what you said or did was not intended in an offensive way, but you found out later it was misunderstood or taken out of context. Maybe you should have known at the time that...
7 Ways to Strengthen and Develop Younger Believers
At the end of his life, Paul wrote these warm words to Timothy: “As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4). When Timothy first joined Paul’s team (cf. Acts 16:1f), Paul was about 50...
Leaving Your Church for Another Close By
At least initially, no one who believed and was baptized and came into the membership of the church in Corinth could then leave that church and join another close by. That was not an option since there was only one local church in the area. Every...
Conversation: Make It Better for Christ
Good conversation went fugitive with the invasion of electronic media. Yet you long for it, and so do those in your circle of acquaintances. Believers in Christ ought to be excellent at it. Even our non-believing friends ought to leave us saying, “That was the best...
The Old Church
There is no shame in getting old — not for you, or for churches. It is a bad mistake to demean a person for it, when you are headed the same direction and neither of you can stop it. It’s a double shame to defame a...
Strategic Hospitality (Without Grumbling, but Possibly With Eggs)
When I was a boy, we didn’t lock our house during the day, even if we left. Those were the “good ol’ days.” I’m sure security at my parents’ house has changed. We also had an if-you-show-up-we’ll-have-some-dessert-for-you policy. I’m positive that hasn’t changed. I’m thankful to...
