When the World’s All Wrong…Set Your Mind
Have you ever been somewhere that you didn’t belong? Have you found yourself in a place where you just didn’t fit in? In a place that just seemed all wrong for you? This too was the experience of the prophet Daniel. He found himself in a world where he did not belong. As you read...
Julia Martin
Making Sense of the Gap between the Writing of the NT and Its Compilation
The 27 books of the New Testament were all written sometime in the 1st century AD. But when were all these 27 books first compiled into what we now call the New Testament? That’s a different question entirely. Were all 27 books compiled together in the 1st Century, when the books were written? No. How...
Brett Seybold
On Gender and the Bible: Why Do Women Stay Silent in 1 Corinthians 14? (Part 3)
This will be another in-depth post where we examine what the Word of God teaches about men and women in the church. It is the third installment in a series engaging with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story, and Scot McKnight’s book, Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read...
My Approach to Apologetics: God Will Come Through
As I’ve gone down the road to becoming an apologist, a defender of the Christian faith, it has been a thrilling adventure, at times disturbing and at times very exciting. I had always felt a call towards defending the Christian faith, ever since my early days of becoming a Christian. It seemed to me that...
Jonathan Lichtenwalter
Fishing & Faith
Everywhere I looked, there was someone sitting in the grass or on stone ledges where they could get a nice view of the Sea of Galilee from the Mount of Beatitudes. In the distance, I could see one of the modern replicas of ancient fishing boats moving through the water at a steady pace. Just...
Stephen Brownlow
When Advice Isn’t Helpful
A few Saturdays ago, I placed my cell phone on the back bumper of my wife’s van as I planted some flowers in pots for Mother’s Day. Now I knew that my wife was going to be leaving a little later . . . but as I get older, it’s becoming clearer to me that...
David Upchurch
6 Ways to Emerge from COVID Ready for Hospitality
In my previous article, we talked about emerging from COVID with a commitment to show hospitality. Now, let’s jump into some hospitable ideas: #1 – Invite solicitors into your home. It may be a salesperson, a neighborhood kid raising money, a door-to-door evangelist–whatever it is, hearing the doorbell might make you run and hide. But think...
Taffeta Chime
On Gender and the Bible: What’s Up with Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11? (Part 2)
(For Part 1, click here.) This is the second installment in a series engaging with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story, and Scot McKnight’s book, Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. In the first post, we critiqued the methods and tools used by both authors to...
Emerging from COVID with a Commitment to Hospitality
I used to work as an ESL/EFL teacher at a language school, and I remember having a conversation with the school’s housing director back in 2017, when she asked us if my husband and I were fine having a Japanese boy stay at our house for about a year. My answer was essentially, “Sure, why...
Taffeta Chime
Great Worship during a Terrible Time
My 5-year old son, Caleb, is a hedonist. What 5-year old isn’t? I wouldn’t even attempt to identify his number on the Enneagram, but I do know that he loves to have a great time. He’s always cracking jokes (some of them are funny), and he is always making funny faces. He knows how cute...
Corey Scott
In Seasons of Suffering, You Need a Pile of Stones.
Today I wrote these words in my biblical journal, a journal that has been woefully neglected of late: “How do I worship and testify when all I feel is loss and suffering, which [God] allowed or even ordained?” It’s an uncomfortable question. At the start of 2020, I was on the mountaintop. Life wasn’t perfect,...
Luke Gray
Promise Keepers: The Night We Encouraged Our Pastors
When I was approached by Renew.org to write a series of articles about the founding of Promise Keepers, I was asked to recount what I had experienced and learned from eleven years on the Board of Directors at Promise Keepers. There are so many experiences to report. So many absolutely amazing moments to share. Through...
David Roadcup
On Gender and the Bible: What John Mark Hicks and Scot McKnight Get Right and Wrong (Part 1)
Who doesn’t love a good story? John Mark Hicks’s new book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story in the Bible, is full of them. We find the story of Hicks’s journey from rigid patriarchy to egalitarianism, the stories of church history and its various positions on the subject of women in ministry,...
How to Start 3 Types of Discipleship Groups Using the Teachings of Jesus
This booklet is an introductory guide to three different types of discipling groups and how to use material on the teachings of Jesus in each of the different groups. This book, along with Trust and Follow Jesus: The Leader’s Guide,…
Bobby Harrington
We’re Doing Evangelism in Wartime
“Clothe yourselves with the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens” (Ephesians...
Daniel C. Berk
A Reckoning for the Church
This one is going to be rough. We spent a lot of time looking at “Judge not, lest you be judged” (Mt. 7:1-6) because judgmentalism is probably the great sin of the contemporary American church. Let me explain. There are two kinds of unbelievers in the United States–those who haven’t heard of Jesus and those...
Jeremy Bacon