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Race and the Church RVA: Telling the Truth
On Saturday morning January 30, scores of church leaders, along with a smathering of parishioners, gathered in the basement of an old department-store-turned-church in Richmond, Virginia for a discussion on Race and the Church. The invited primary speaker was Dr. Sean Lucas, pastor of historic First Presbyterian Church of Hattiesburg, Mississippi; adjunct professor at Reformed…
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Selling Out the Gospel at the Altar of Politics
I don’t do politics on social media (nor in the pulpit), but I feel an exception is warranted – on social media, anyway. With the exception that I don’t really care that Donald Trump has not previously held public office, nor do I care that neither Ben Carson nor Carly Fiorina have ever held public office, pretty much…
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6 Ways Ministry Spouses Get Hurt By the Church
Researcher Thom Rainer identifies Six Ways Ministry Spouses Get Hurt. I have listed them below, slightly reworded: Every non-staff church leader should be aware of these. Every church member should be aware of these. They are very real. I have experienced all of these in one form or another, in one church or another. I…
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Evangelical Typecasts
It is interesting. It is even more troubling. CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke has posted an article to CNN Politics titled 7 Types of Evangelicals: And How They’ll Effect the Presidential Race. The post is interesting in that it describes differences among those who label themselves “Evangelical”, and creates categories for each. It is troubling,…
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Prayer Group Participants
Earlier this week, for a change of pace, and to set our orientation, I had our staff open our weekly meeting with a period of liturgical prayer. This kind of prayer is not really part of our tradition. It appears, from what I occasionally read, that some from our tradition are intensely opposed to such…
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Marks of Revival
I had the privilege last week to meet a man convinced we are headed for revival. He is a gentle man, who thinks often of God, wishing for a return to some semblance of the way things used to be – minus the overt sins of racism and sexism that were so widely tolerated in…
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Knowing God
More than 200 names for God are recorded in the Bible. All of them are important. Each of them reveals and affirms certain characteristics of God. While God is incomprehensible – we will never exhaust what there is to know about Him – He is nevertheless knowable. He has revealed himself to us. To know…
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Illustration of a Healthy Church
If our congregation were to be a church with the gospel, plus a group that enjoys being together in community, but we were not on mission to reach out to our neighbors and the Nations, for the sake of advancing Christ’s Kingdom, then we would just be another social club for people to attend. Gospel…
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I Pledge My Life to Jesus & the Gospel
I pledge my life to Jesus and the Gospel. I want Jesus not to be just part of my life or something that makes me feel good, but to be the very center – controlling everything. I want only the knowledge of the love of God. I want to know Christ. I want no desire,…
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Authentic Church: Road to a Re-newed Reality
I have been mulling on something the late Francis Schaeffer said: “There are four things which are absolutely necessary if we as Christians are going to meet the need of our age and the overwhelming pressure we are increasingly facing.” No doubt that the Church, in our culture as well as other cultures, faces increasing…
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A Prayer for the New Year
O Lord, Length of days does not profit me except the days that are passed in Your presence, in Your service, to Your glory. Give me a grace that precedes, follows, guides, sustains, sanctifies, aids every hour, that I may not be one moment apart from Thee, but may rely on Your Spirit to supply…
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Dangers of Spiritual Resolutions
I’ve been there. Likely, so have you. The year begins with good intentions, and maybe even a strong start, only to fizzle days later. The Statistic Brain Research Institute reports that 75% of New Years Resolutions are broken within the first week of the New Year. No doubt most of the others go down soon…
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Symbol of a New Day Dawning
From time to time I am asked why I have a rooster for a profile picture, both on my blog and on Facebook. What’s more, the rooster is also the screensaver on my phone. I use these images for more reason than just the bucolic tranquility they depict. The rooster has a long history as…
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Is This Why We Don’t Engage Our Neighbors?
Here is a challenging perspective and good instruction from Leon Brown, church planter and pastor at Crown & Joy Presbyterian Church in South Richmond, Virginia: “I fear that one of the reasons we don’t know how to engage non-Christians to talk about Jesus is because we’ve forgotten how to have regular conversations. If the conversation…
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