Across my desk is a young couple who have come for counseling because they are having a real struggle with their four-year-old son. For reasons that are beyond their understanding, their boy has begun eating dirt. They have done everything they know to convince him that eating dirt is not at all good for him, but whenever they are not around, he goes right back to it. They are concerned that this...
Eleven years ago, I stood in the pulpit of a dying church. Despite an expansive building, the worship area was mostly empty as I preached the installation service for Rich Shadden. After serving three years as a pastoral intern in the church where I pastored, he was ready to leave the nest for the challenge of pastoral ministry. He and his wife had prayed often about doing revitalization work in...
I eagerly prepared to preach after a long delay from in-person worship gatherings with my church family. In God’s providence, the world had shut down from the COVID-19 pandemic. Months later as I sat there preparing, I felt the emotion with which Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians 2:17: “But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more...
“As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you”—these were the parting instructions Jesus left his followers. A common myth in Christianity is that living on mission and being sent is just for a select few—that it takes a special calling to share Jesus and make disciples of those living in other parts of the world. The truth is that every Christian is called and empowered to make Jesus...
Francis Schaeffer wrote about a “Christian consensus,” which used to be present in American culture. The atheist banker and the Christian might disagree about God, but they would agree on questions about basic morality, marriage, and human sexuality. That consensus no longer exists. Some involved in politics and the legal system (including government attorneys and many judges) are not just...
