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A few weeks ago, the FMC musicians met for their monthly worship practice. Before diving into the music, they read through an article on congregational singing written by Mark Dever and Matt Merker found at www.9.marks.org journal church-singing .
The article emphasized how scarce ‘corporate singing’ has become within the... -
Two weeks ago, Janice and I spent a few days at Deer Ridge Ministries - a spiritual retreat center which accommodates couples who serve in full-time ministry. This ministry began over a decade ago to facilitate place where pastors can intentionally practice Sabbath without added responsibilities. But what is Sabbath? It is an...
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What do the story of Jesus birth, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and Dicken’s “The Christmas Carol,” all have in common?
Among other answers, each story involves a character with deep-seeded bitterness and resentment – King Herod, the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge. Now certainly, each person... -
A couple of years ago, my wife and I celebrated our anniversary by staying in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. The city itself is beautiful and filled with locally-owned restaurants and shops. There is also a plethora of spiritually-inspired stores. In Asheville, you can easily purchase statues of Buddha, a variety of...
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Liberal. Conservative. Progressive. Traditionalist.
Hardly a day goes by without these adjectives appearing in my BBC international newsfeed or showing up in various written or spoken conversations around the topic of the climate of North American church. I don’t know if you describe yourself using any of... -
As we have been focusing on prayer through this year, my eyes have been on the lookout for various prayers that are offered to the Lord from the various writers of Scripture. This week, I was struck by the prayer which the Apostle Paul prayed for the church of the Thessalonians at the end of chapter 3.
He wrote, “May the Lord... -
Charles Spurgeon once said, “Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus. It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honor of a Christian.”
Indeed, directly seeking the face of God and laying our anxieties at His... -
What makes a man? As a father of three sons, I think about this often as we play, talk, and experience life together. Whether I like it or not, their primary understanding of manhood will come from me – what I say, how I act, what I value, etc. Yet my goal, is to continue to lead them beyond myself and to Jesus and...
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There are many common experiences that Christians all share. Typically these experiences (like cronic pain, the struggles of parenting, the difficultly of offering forgiveness or methods of coping with the abruptness of death) become the subject of conversation as prayer requests are shared.
However, the experience of spiritual... -
Occasionally as I’m reading the New Testament, I try to imagine how I would respond to various situations, teachings or events if they had taken place in our modern day. Suppose that you were at your cousin’s wedding when some unknown thirty year-old named Jesus turned water into excellent tasting wine. Or imagine being...
