Archives for July 2014

Many churches, like mine, find themselves in a state of plateau or decline. We want our churches to grow and believe that God desires that too, but we seem stuck and don’t know how to move forward. Our first instinct ought to be to pray, but pray for what? If you are leading a declining […]

Are you busy? Probably, it seems we are all busy all the time.  We like to judge if we are working hard by being busy. There is a huge problem that comes from us being busy all the time, however. You see, we are told in scripture about a whole lot of “one anothers”. We […]

I can remember driving down the highway in Virginia in a state of depression. I’ve slipped into depression – probably a milder form than many have experienced – two or three times in my life. One was during my first pastorate, back in the late 80s. Every Saturday I’d get a copy of the Richmond newspaper […]

Word has begun to leak out about the tragedy that has come upon the Ergun Caner family. Braxton Caner, the 15 year-old son of Ergun Caner, has committed suicide, according to reports that have become public. I know from experience the devastation that suicide brings in families, though the loss of a child must multiply […]

I have grown up mostly in the 80s and 90s, and during those time periods, there has been a shift in the way examination and beliefs have processed. In the baby boomer generation, the question was “what should we do”? In my generation, Gen X and Gen Y, the question is not so much of […]

I’ve long been intrigued by the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Truth be told I’ve been a bit emotionally bothered by the story. I’ve often read it as if Pharaoh would have repented and turned out to be a good dude around plague #4 but because the Lord hardened his heart he remained a stubborn jerk. […]

Matthew Vines, the self proposed “gay Christian,” in his book, God and the Gay Christian, argues that gay people in committed relationships is not ungodly or unbiblical. This is to say that Vines believes that it’s okay–biblically warranted even–to be homosexual, so long as you are in a monogamous relationship. His book argues this point by […]