Communicating with people is often easier said than done. Take for instance this apocryphal story of the census taker who had to venture many miles down a country road to reach a cabin. As the man pul...
In one fascinating study some years ago, subjects were presented with evidence suggesting that there was a correlation between heavy caffeine use and breast cancer. Subjects were then asked to report ...
Statistics show that 80 percent of new pastors leave the ministry within five years. A friend once remarked, “If they were able to pastor churches without people, they might last ten years.” Most past...
James 1:19-20, Ephesians 4:29, Proverbs 18:21, Colossians 4:6, Proverbs 10:19, Matthew 12:36-37, Proverbs 29:11, 2 Timothy 2:23-24, Proverbs 17:27-28, James 3:5-6, Ecclesiastes 10:12-14, Psalm 141:3
Have you ever heard of Godwin's Law? While it may sound like some overly technical scientific hypothesis, it’s actually quite simple. Godwin's Law, first coined in 1990 by an an attorney and e...
ABC News ran a story about neighborhood roads that have literally become commercial thoroughfares because GPS systems are routing traffic there, rather than along larger highways. There are other prob...
The Pew Research Center study showed that millennials had far more negative views of their generation compared with Generation Xers, baby boomers or other age groups. More than half of millennials, 59...
In this short excerpt, professor and pastor Tod Bolsinger describes how the changing world of ministry (in the West) has led some pastors to simply give up trying: About twelve years ago, I heard a ...
One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.
As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...
Matthew 22:21, Isaiah 5:8-9, John 6:63, Matthew 22:15-22, John 8:1-11, Colossians 2:2-3, 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Jesus Christ was prone to making comments which seem to support an almost infinite variety of exegesis. A remark like ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and ‘unto God the things that are ...
I recently heard a story about a race in which one runner had a significant lead over the rest of the field. As the man rounded the final turn, the crowd roared as he inched closer and closer to the f...
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom: Enlighten by your Holy Spirit those who teach and those who learn, that, rejoicing in the knowledge of your truth, they may worship you and serve you from gen...
1 Peter 4:12-13, Matthew 5:10-12, Isaiah 40:31, 2 Timothy 1:7, Proverbs 29:25, James 1:2-4, Galatians 1:10
Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.
Deconstruction isn’t a trendy thing to do, but it is a trend that is happening at scale in our country and passing from person to person. Anecdotally, when I look up various hashtags on TikTok, th...
Many of life’s annoyances just have to be ignored. That doesn’t mean that we suppress, ignore, or deny every pain. Serious pain has to be confronted. But one mark of resilience is learning to tell whi...
Colossians 2:2-3, Proverbs 2:6, John 14:26, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, James 1:22, Psalm 119:34, Matthew 7:24-27
Lord, all your treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. You reveal them to us through words spoken in his name. May we understand and obey.
Becoming a Navy Seal is considered the most challenging training of any military unit in the U.S. military. And as difficult as most of their training is, nothing can compare to BUDS, which stands for...
Anxiety sparks when a perspective we value bumps into another perspective that challenges it in some way. If we find this new perspective to be unacceptable, that’s when our “Someone is wrong on the i...
In his book, Running Scared, Pychologist Edward Welch illustrates how the fear of an event is often worse than the event itself. To demonstrate this, he provides two examples of people whose lives are...
If we see more and further than they, it is not because of our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high by their gigantic stature.
In her excellent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren describes an encoutner her husband experienced while working on his PhD. While my husband, Jonathan, was getting...
These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in cons...
James 1:22-24, Matthew 7:24-27, Colossians 3:16, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Hebrews 5:12-14
I’m a huge advocate of catechisms, for example, having used this approach with my kids. I even wrote one. The strength of a catechism isn’t in memorizing the questions and answers of the catechism; th...
Matthew 11:16-19, Ephesians 4:14, Mark 10:14, 1 Samuel 16:7, 1 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Corinthians 6:14, 2 Timothy 2:15, Proverbs 23:12, Proverbs 3:5, Acts 26:24
The Missing “Advent” Text A lectionary preacher moving from the fifth to the sixth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A will notice that a familiar chunk is missing, sent back in time to the third Sunday...
Proverbs 29:25, Acts 4:13, John 15:18-19, 2 Timothy 1:7-8, Colossians 4:5-6, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 1:16
Why is it so intimidating to talk about Jesus in contemporary western culture? One obvious reason might lie in the ubiquitous negative portrayals of Christians in mainstream media. Sam Chan makes this...