Essays on faith, theology, culture, and the Christian life. Discover articles filtered by topic, format, audience, and difficulty level.
22 articles
The gap between the academy and the local church is one of the more lamented features of contemporary Christian life, and it is genuinely real. The th...
The staff member in personal crisis — in the middle of a marital breakdown, dealing with a mental health emergency, struggling with addiction, process...
The incoming pastor who inherits a congregation where the previous leader did genuine harm is in one of the most complex pastoral situations in minist...
The conversation about artificial intelligence and the church has moved remarkably quickly from "this is interesting to consider" to "this is somethin...
Church splits are among the most painful experiences in ministry, and they are more common than the pastoral culture likes to acknowledge. The mytholo...
The first time a church sends someone from its own congregation into cross-cultural mission — not just giving money to a distant agency, but releasing...
The short-term mission trip is one of the most common and most debated practices in contemporary evangelical church life. Millions of Americans partic...
The statistic from Tony Morgan and The Unstuck Group has become one of the most-cited in pastoral leadership conversations, and it has become that bec...
No pastor goes into ministry hoping to fire people. The whole orientation of the calling is toward welcome, restoration, and the generous extension of...
They look like virtues from the outside. The pastor who prepares for Sunday with extraordinary care. The leader who cannot let a decision go until eve...
The cost of staff turnover in ministry is enormous and systematically underestimated. There is the obvious cost: the recruiting process, the onboardin...
The language of church revitalization has been one of the most discussed topics in pastoral circles for the past decade, and for good reason. The numb...
Every CEO of a significant company has a board. Not because they are incompetent, but because the decisions they make are too important to make alone....
The numbers can be misleading. A growing church can feel like a successful church. And in one sense, it is — people are gathering, the budget is healt...
Every year, thousands of pastors walk away from ministry. Some leave quietly. Others burn out in public. A few disappear into ordinary jobs and never ...
She has been sitting in your congregation for years. And she has never told anyone — cannot tell anyone — because the culture of the church has made it clear what the response would be....
A woman in a crisis pregnancy is not a political cause. She is a person in the middle of the hardest decision she may ever face, usually alone, often afraid....
Few words in the marriage conversation have been more weaponized than submission. The actual text of Ephesians 5 is more disruptive than either camp typically admits....
Constantine did not merely tolerate Christianity. He favored it. He returned confiscated property to the churches. He exempted clergy from certain taxes and civic duties. He funded church construction. He convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 to resolve theological disputes---with imperial authority backing the proceedings. Within a generation, Christianity moved from the margins to the center of Roman life. By 380 AD, under Emperor Theodosius I, Nicene Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. For many believers, this felt like vindication. After centuries of suffering, God had finally delivered His people. The prayers of the martyrs had been answered. The church had endured the furnace, and now it was being crowned....
Not because they were uniquely evil. Not because they lacked sincere faith. But because they were afraid. And fear, as we have seen throughout this book, makes the idol feel necessary. Fear makes the chariot look like the only option. Fear makes the strongman’s promises sound like the voice of God....
How Patriotism Became Our Practical Savior. A direct examination of how patriotism has replaced the kingdom of God as the practical savior in American Christianity....
You cannot lead a church alone. Building a strong leadership team is essential for the health and growth of the congregation....