July 12th, 2016
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I can remember hearing a colleague once boast, “I never read anyone except Reformed authors. I don’t want to waste my time with what other less-informed theologians think.”
July 5th, 2016
In church lingo there are two types of children beyond the regular kids that wander the church halls—PKs and MKs—Preacher’s kids and Missionary’s kids. In church lore PKs and MKs have built up a reputation.
June 28th, 2016
As a child I can remember there were massive differences between my maternal and paternal grandparents. My paternal grandparents hardly ever said a cross word at one another—I don’t recall them ever having a fight.
June 21st, 2016
I can remember listening to my critics in seminary as they berated me for my theology, “You Calvinists have everything figured out—you put God in your box and leave no room for mystery!”
June 14th, 2016
One of the church’s biggest problems is divorce. I can’t say that I’ve seen any documented statistics, but one of the mantras I’ve heard over the years is that the divorce rate is the same inside and outside the church.
June 7th, 2016
Christ has given the church the great commission—to go into the nations, baptize, and teach them all Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18ff). In a word, we are supposed to evangelize.
May 31st, 2016
It has happened to me, and I’ve heard of it happening to other churches, namely, what do you do if at the last minute you can’t preach? In my case, I came down with a really bad cold to the point where I lost my voice.
May 24th, 2016
One of the places where I have seen godly Christians spiral into a death spin of bad behavior is when they play sports. I used to play pick-up basketball games at my church in the early mornings (I was a non-shooting, non-dribbling point guard, that is to say, I am no good at basketball), and I enjoyed this because it was a fun way to get some exercise.
May 17th, 2016
I was once sitting in the pastor’s office doing my sermon preparation and one of the members of the church passed by the door and noticed me highlighting my commentary and writing notes in the margins.
May 10th, 2016
One of the things that I’ve noticed over the last ten years is, more and more Reformed churches are letting the evening worship service fall to the wayside. Churches either drop the service all together, or turn it into a Bible study, or perhaps only have one evening worship service a month.
May 3rd, 2016
One book that I would highly recommend for any serious student, even the not so serious student, is A. G. Sertillanges’s, The Intellectual Life. While there are some things in the book that one can set aside, Sertillanges approaches the subject of the intellectual life from the vantage point of a Christian called to academic studies.
April 26th, 2016
We live in an ever-increasing age where numerous technological developments vie for our attention. Slowly but surely we are programming ourselves constantly to be on the alert and listen for imminently arriving bleeps and buzzes from our electronic devices informing us of a newly arrived e-mail, text, phone call, or tweet.
April 19th, 2016
Ever since my teenage years I’ve done my best to exercise three to four times a week, which means that I’ve spent time in the gym for a good portion of my life.
April 12th, 2016
If you follow the American job-then-retirement narrative, you’re supposed to go to college, get a job, work for forty years, retire, and then spend the rest of your days on the tennis court or golf course.
March 29th, 2016
Over the years I’ve been able to watch seminary students excitedly depart for summer internships and then hear from their supervising pastors how well or poorly they did. Many interns do fine, but there are some who have trouble.
March 22nd, 2016
One of the most important elements of being a good pastor is maintaining a good poker face when you’re counseling, that is, showing no reaction. I promise, chances are you will sit down with people in your church and hear of some crazy things.
March 15th, 2016
One day during a heated doctrinal debate at presbytery my wife walked into the back the church sanctuary where we were having our meeting. She was supposed to meet me for dinner so she arrived a few minutes early.
March 8th, 2016
When I was an intern I served at a church that had its building by a main road. This meant that we received our fair share of people who were looking for handouts. Rather than usher the people away, the elders of the church made a genuine effort to help people with diaconal assistance.
March 1st, 2016
In our culture there are many things that society tells us makes a man—can he earn a healthy salary? Does he own a house? Drive a truck? Wear stylish clothes? Popular with women? Bench press 250? You get the idea.
February 23rd, 2016
At times I find myself swimming against the tide of popular trends. In particular, one such trend where I find myself out of place is in the desire to read biographies of great Christians. In general, I’m not opposed to learning about the lives of famous Christians, but I do have two concerns.
