evangelism on Enemy

I was driving in Columbus, Ohio, when I came upon a hitchhiker who alternated between holding his thumb out and clasping his hands together as if he were praying. I picked him up. His name was Mike, a...

Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all the humans and animals ...

Gracious and Merciful God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: When we wouldn’t love—You did. When we couldn’t do right—you could. When we wouldn’t give—You gave and gave all of yourself. So we come to You w...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all ...

Preaching Angle: Preach the Word, Rest in God’s Work Maybe I tend to focus on the negative, but when I read the parable of the soils, I tend to focus on the soils that struggle (the soil too close to...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Preach the Word, Rest in God’s Work Maybe I tend to focus on the negative, but when I read the parable of the soils, I tend to focus on the soils that struggle...

Lord Jesus, you send us out into the world in your name, but we prefer to stay safely behind. We are nervous, and unmotivated, and uncertain. We love to think about how you love us, but we are much mo...

One way to recognize whether we suffer from this disconnection is to look at our concern for people who are dirty... people who are "other"... people who don't fit the core group's i...

In another day and age, God, religion and church enjoyed the general respect of the culture. Not today. Religion is suspect, church is weird, and Christians are hypocrites. Distrust has become the nor...

When God is seeking a person, he will not allow my fear, my feeling of intimidation or my lack of knowledge or experience to prevent that person from finding him.

If he have faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He betrays himself. He breaks out. He confesses and teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself.

Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.

Dear Lord, we come before You today as Your children. We praise You as the God of all creation and the giver of life. You have made us, saved us, and called us to be Your people and to serve in Your K...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we are unable to do all the work that you wish for us to do. We are held back by our own desires and our own apprehensions. We know that you make us bearers of your im...

Christians and non-Christians have something in common: we’re both uptight about evangelism. Our fear as Christians seems to be How many people did I offend this week? We think that we must be a littl...

In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and po...

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, na...

Evangelism is finding Christ already present in the world, and inviting the other into the loving belonging of the inclusive family of God.

Lord, your love is remarkable. Despite our ongoing sin, You have graciously pursued us, forgiven us, and saved us. We confess that sharing Your saving love is sometimes intimidating. Forgive us for be...

In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...

Prayer of Adoration Good morning, Father. While we slept last night – You were awake, sustaining our world, protecting us and readying a new day. Jesus – You hold us in the palms of Your hands: str...

Gracious God, You call us to be salt and light but we often keep our lights hidden away. We do not use our words or actions to encourage others to pursue a life with You. We take the Gospel for oursel...

Merciful God, you have moved and changed our lives in amazing ways, yet we have kept these stories to ourselves. We confess the times we have kept these stories to ourselves out of fear of rejection a...

Gracious God, we admit that though You have sent each of us out with the task of raising disciples, we often neglect that task. We remain content, stagnant, in our Christian calling, while we regularl...

A Multi-faceted Church Who loses by the church and parachurch’s lack of unity and cooperation? Absolutely everyone : congregations, ministry organizations, ministry leaders, individual believers . ....

I've seen far too many Christians who are more than willing to travel halfway around the world to volunteer for a week in an orphanage, but who cannot bring themselves to take the personal risk of...

If my testimony of the gospel revolves around a plotline of, “I used to struggle with this, but God gave me the victory and now I’m free/healed/saved/fill in the blank,” I have immediately distanced m...

Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ.

How great and glorious You are, O God. There is no one like You. You transform our weakness into strength. You forgive our stubbornness and arrogance, and fill us with Your generous wisdom. You turn o...