Occasionally I find myself in a conversation with a non-Christian friend. Sometimes, I have to pay close attention to the language I use if the talk turns to things related to God and ultimate reality. I do the same when I talk to my children about Bible things. I want to be understood, but the normal Christian terms are a foreign language to many people, Christians included. The terms are difficult to use when they don’t communicate.
I recently came across an excellent list of questions that every missionary thinking of joining a missions agency should ask before signing up. This list, and the introductory paragraphs, were written by Dan Crane from the First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton. They are reprinted with permission.
Just this month, after leading a two-week study tour with the Whittier Area Community Church, our group returned home on June 8, 2014. Most of us met a barrage of questions about “What’s really going on over there? Resulting conversations intensified when the latest surge of “Israel vs. Hamas” fighting erupted in the Gaza Strip about three weeks later ...
One of the qualifications for an overseer/elder/pastor (all the same office in the Bible) is that he be “free from the love of money” (1 Tim. 3:3). Now suppose that you are on an elder board and seeking to know whether a new candidate for the office is in fact free from the love of money, how can you figure it out? Here are five useful diagnostic questions.
La semana pasada mi esposa, Angélica, y yo celebramos 16 años de casados. Angélica es, sin duda, la mayor bendición que he recibido y nuestro matrimonio ha sido el mejor y a la vez el más difícil tiempo de mi vida. Estoy profundamente agradecido por la dicha de haber encontrado el favor divino en mi esposa y puedo asegurar con toda certeza que soy feliz a su lado. También he de reconocer que el matrimonio no es fácil y caminar por la vida junto a otra persona por momentos pareciera una carrera de obstáculos. Esta combinación de realidades, aunque parecieran contradictorias, reflejan acertadamente mis años de casado y estoy seguro la de la mayoría de los matrimonios entre seguidores de Cristo.
Each August the Hellermans spend several weeks vacationing in the mountains, in Mammoth Lakes, CA. One afternoon, on one of our getaways, our oldest daughter (then thirteen years old) came out of her room with a play she had written. Rebekah has always been into drama. She had participated in a number of children’s theater productions at our previous church. On the home front, Rebekah recruited neighborhood friends and staged “plays” before a captive audience of indulgent parents ... So began an adventure that continues to unfold today, sixteen years later.
I am all for weekends (even when I have to work, such as doing lesson planning, grading, or writing a blog post!). But sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking of work as the negative and leisure or rest as the positive aspect of our lives. Work can become something we need to “get through” in order to make it to the weekend; Sundays are our “spiritual” days as opposed to our “working” days that begin on Mondays, and so forth.
People have studied leaders for centuries. To study leaders is to analyze the characteristics of individual people who demonstrate the ability to gather a group of followers. However, the study of leadership is a relatively new discipline dating from about the year 1900. To study leadership is to inspect the interactions a leader has with his or her followers. Both areas of study require one to define a leader. So just what is a leader? ...
It’s wedding season and there are many ways to celebrate on that special day for the bride and the groom. One of the best ways to celebrate this occasion is through the traditional toast that is given during the wedding reception. However, I’ve recently seen that what should typically be one of the high points of the reception just flops miserably... This is not what we should do to the bride or groom! I’d like to offer a few suggestions in this blog of what not to do in a toast and then what one should do in order to make the celebration a wonderful and meaningful one.
In 19th century England, Atheists knew more about the Bible than most Christians do today. So did Liberal Anglicans, Anglo-Catholics, Unitarians, and Agnostics. So claims Timothy Larsen in A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford, 2011) ...
A question that naturally surfaces in [the reading of Luke 18:18-27] is whether Jesus considers wealth to be compatible with a life of faithful discipleship. Some interpret this story to say that material things and following Jesus do not mix well. This interpretation is sometimes based on a plain reading of passages like this, but it can also be motivated by material excesses in Christianity that make us uncomfortable. Too much focus on material blessing as a necessary indicator of God’s approval can stifle efforts at legitimate Christian disciplines such as frugality, generosity, and financial sacrifice. As such, divesting material wealth is sometimes seen as a corrective to bad prosperity theology ...
In my last post, I talked about the importance of our ministry with children and some ministry objectives we need to pursue. In this follow up blog I would like to talk about four aspects of children’s ministry that together help us accomplish our goals of helping children grow and mature as a part of the church, the people of God. These are worthy goals, and it can be tempting to try to design one children’s program in the church to address them all. But if we take them each seriously, it will soon be clear that this is more than a matter of having a class or a club program for children. Instead, it requires thinking carefully about the full life of the church, as well as the church and family environment our children grow up in. It has implications for what we do for our children, with them, to them, and the opportunities we provide for them to be engaged in ministry themselves. I invite you to read and think with me about what this might look like.
We have previously been working through some of the unique and distinct challenges that Asian-American couples face in regards to preparing for weddings and marriage. This blog has raised some of the issues that typically come out during pre-marital counseling sessions. The goal of this series has been to try and understand some of these cultural dynamics that may be vastly different from the many books that are out there on the subject of pre-marital counseling and marriage that may be written from a Western perspective. Some of these differences include dealing with parents, setting up appropriate wedding venues and services, transfer of authority between parents and spouses, guest lists for the wedding, and other potentially shame based challenges. This blog will now give some general and practical advice on how to resolve some of these tensions.
In November 2009 my family had the incredible honor to adopt Mfundo from South Africa. The journey to that point was filled with unknown challenges to us, as we happened to be the first adoptive family from the United States to legally adopt in South Africa. We were not the first to try to adopt from this country; we were just the family that happened to be furthest into the adoptive pre-work when the two countries came into agreement for international adoptions.
In my last blog, I explored some of the key differences of the dynamics of Asian-American weddings specifically in relationship to “honoring” the parents and their guests at the wedding ceremony. In this blog, I’d like to discuss some of the challenges related to the relational dynamics of the different families prior to marriage. This will include “family matching,” approval of different vocations, and the transfer of authority from the father/mother to the husband and bride ...
New churches are usually much more effective at winning new people to faith in Christ than older churches. For many reasons, as a church grows older, it develops barriers that keep it from making new disciples. The list of evangelistic barriers is long and complex, but the following are a few insights as to why churches become less effective at evangelism. Once a church recognizes some of the barriers, it can then take action to eliminate them ...
... Among the unique aspects of early Christianity, when compared to other religious options in the ancient world, are the relationships the early Christians shared across geographical boundaries. The church was a family—not only locally but also from town to town ...
“¿Cómo estás?” Un amigo mío respondía en tono de broma a esta común pregunta con las palabras “bien, pero ni modo” o “bien, pero ya se me va a pasar”. Aunque su respuesta era graciosa en el fondo describía una tendencia común de nuestras percepciones y sentimientos. Por alguna razón es más fácil enfocarnos en lo negativo y olvidarnos de todo lo positivo que tenemos y recibimos. A pesar de estar llenos de bendiciones, con frecuencia pensamos que siempre nos falta algo y que nunca tenemos lo suficiente o alcanzamos la plenitud de la vida.
Women’s ministry has existed throughout the centuries of Christian history, and it is here to stay. In this blog post, Nell Sunukjian shares about the ways that women have been an active part of ministry throughout the centuries.
Despite nearly five months of instability in Ukraine, students in the Talbot School of Theology Kyiv Extension are pressing on with their ministries and with their studies.
In my last blog, I discussed the concept of how the parent-child relationship is viewed differently from an Eastern Asian style than a Western American style. With this difference comes the difficulty of “leaving and cleaving” as found in Genesis 2:25. This also relates to obedience from parents for a lifetime since being a child is viewed more as a permanent status rather than an age range. This is also coupled with a long-term care of the parents supported by passages such as 1 Timothy 5:8 which states that if one does not care for his family that he is worse than an unbeliever.
I’ve begun reading into the topic of women and men in ministry. I noticed immediately that the concept of “head” stands out in the debate between egalitarian and complementarian interpretations. As a metaphor, the concepts and specific applications intended by Paul can be elusive. For help, I turned to an expert on the subject, my colleague, Dr. Michelle Lee-Barnewall. Below are her explanations of four questions as part of beginning to explore the meaning of “headship.”
It’s been awhile since I have posted on the Good Book Blog. Since I come back to post a few times a year, I want to begin with an area of ministry that is very dear to my heart – ministry with children. In many ways, I think the church in general has a very mixed view of ministry with children. On the one hand we recognize that children are a gift, and we value them highly. On the other hand, we may often feel that “real ministry” takes place with youth and adults. Perhaps it is that we more readily see the impact of our teaching with youth or adults, and in ministry with children it is harder to see significant changes. What we may miss out on is seeing the powerful foundational nature of ministry with children that sets life directions and patterns that “bloom” later in adulthood. I, for one, recognize the critical importance of ministry with children, and the impact it can have for a lifetime. In this blog, and the one that will follow, I’ll be talking about the kinds of ministry objectives we should be aiming for in ministry with children, and some models of ministry for those who serve the children in their congregations. What I share here is adapted and expanded from some material I wrote as part of Introducing Christian Education and Formation, by Ron Habermas, published by Zondervan (2008).
Have you ever noticed how often we rank skills over character? You’re seeking to hire someone for a job. Which is more important? Skills for the job, or the character of the one seeking the job? In almost every hiring situation, skills are the focus (though I have heard that Human Resources folks are increasingly Facebook and Instagram-stalking potential employees in an attempt to ascertain whatever they can about applicants’ private lives.) I would like to suggest that in Christian ministry, character should be weighted over skills.
Biola University