And here’s where the rubber meets the road: I don’t know how we can say we love and belong to the church without loving and belonging to a church. Or saying we want to connect with God, but we won’t listen to God’s Word for only 45 minutes out of all the minutes in a week. Ultimately, it’s like claiming we’re righteous in Christ, but not bothering to “put on” that righteousness with how we live.
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Why We Should Choose Church Anyway
So, I had to choose not to stay home (or to just go because people would expect me to go). Instead, I decided to volunteer my time as a pastor and plant a church. Sure, I could just write and speak, flying around the country talking about living on mission. But, I know I needed this thing called church, most specifically though the small group I lead in my neighborhood, an imperfect litte group that prays for and encourages one another each Sunday night.
Our Most Significant Spiritual Decision
Now, almost thirty-three years later and with the perspective of history, we realize that no single decision we made as a couple bore more fruit or had greater impact than that one. Even more significant than my decision to go to seminary, more momentous than the calling to any church, with far greater effect than our move to Southern Seminary, our decision that Tanya would forego work outside our family and ministry was life altering. That single resolution shaped who we are as a couple and enhanced or actually caused all those other blessings.
Stay-at-Home Moms with Missionary Hearts
Let’s reflect God’s desire for a global family in our families. We can’t settle for the American dream, when we’ve known something better, more worthy, and far more global — God’s eternal kingdom. Let’s live with a heart that beats and pleads for God’s glory and global missions, whether it’s in our kitchen in Houston or on the mission field in the Middle East.
Where you and your children lay your head at night doesn’t keep you from serving God for the sake of the nations. This is your mission — local and global — to see God’s name glorified throughout the earth until the day when every knee everywhere will bow.
How to Create a Culture of Evangelism
Oddly, it seems evangelistic programs do other things better than evangelism: they produce community among Christians who take part in them, they encourage believers to take a stand for Christ, and they can enable churches to break into new places of ministry. Those are good things, but they don’t do much for evangelism. Still, we seem to have an insatiable hunger for programs to accomplish evangelism. Why? Programs are like sugar—tasty, even addictive. However, it takes away a desire for more healthy food. Though it provides a quick burst of energy, over time it makes you flabby, and a steady diet will kill you.
Prayer in school and signs on buildings and baby Jesus on the town square and the end of abortion are all wonderful things. They just aren’t the things Jesus called me to petition government intervention for as his disciple. He called for my intervention. He called for my action.
God’s true people NEVER ARRIVE BECAUSE God, the great farmer, causes us to keep GROWING throughout life. If I am the same person today I was ten years ago, I have stagnated. GROWTH demands CHANGE by definition.
Mark Love on Cynicism and Ministry Training
The church is not an abstract list of marks, but rather a living organism in time and space. It is the particularity of the congregation that helps us discern what God’s calling might be for any given congregation. Each congregation, therefore, is brimming with the possibilities of God’s enlivening presence. God is not simply the ideas present in the minister’s head, but is more likely to be seen in the lives and concerns of God’s people. So, the congregation is not simply a place where the minister dumps his or her theology. Instead, the congregation is a source of theology as the Spirit moves among people.
Because of this, we use appreciative tools to attend to the congregation. The congregation is not a problem to be solved, but an imagination to be released.
There’s More to Tithing Than 10%
Even if you give 10 percent faithfully, it doesn’t mean you’ll come away with the right perspective about the other 90 percent.
When the Olympics Gave Out Medals for Art
For the first four decades of competition, the Olympics awarded official medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions. From 1912 to 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavors. Now, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the first artistic competition, even Olympics fanatics are unaware that arts, along with athletics, were a part of the modern Games nearly from the start.
Man pays delinquent lunch accounts of 60 Houston school children
He learned many children at Houston’s Valley Oaks Elementary School could not afford the 40 cents per day for a hot lunch and were receiving cold cheese sandwiches instead, so he paid their bills to bring the accounts of 60 children to zero, KPRC-TV, Houston, reported Friday.
“These are elementary school kids. They don’t need to be worried about finances. They need to be worried about what grade they got in spelling” he added. “The best money I ever spent.”