While the only way to truly avoid a surprise succession is to have an adequate plan in place from the beginning, there are ways to overcome surprise successions if you’ve found yourself in this situation. Here are some key lessons learned from pastors who have faced succession due to unforeseen circumstances and scandal.
As headlines share that carbon emissions are down across the globe and animals are thriving in their natural habitats, it appears that some are suggesting that in order to heal, the Earth needs fewer people.
Churches and religious symbols were attacked by vandals and, in some cases, set ablaze over the weekend.
What is meant by progress? For whom is progress promised? For humanity and human flourishing? As C. S. Lewis warned in his masterful book The Abolition of Man, “The Power of Man to make himself what he pleases means ... the power of some men to make other men what they please.”
“The man-moulders of the new age,” Lewis continued, “will be armed with the powers of the omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.”
Yesterday, we focused on God’s invitation to partner with him in redeeming the pandemic and our other crises. Today, I’d like to think about an intriguing way to reframe such service in these difficult days.
In today's world, it is becoming ever more difficult to spot false prophets among us, so here are seven telltale traits of a false prophet.
As our culture – like the Pharisees who had their own agenda – seethes and gnashes its teeth at those connected to Christ, how do we respond? Over centuries, persecution has taught the church in oppressive settings not to “return reviling for reviling” but instead to repay hostility – and even hate – with love that does no harm.
In Seeing Jesus from the East, Ravi Zacharias and Abdu Murray explain how certain underlying norms of Eastern culture, including the role and purpose of stories and symbols, the power of the “honor and shame” mentality that pervades the East, the meaning and rewards of sacrifice, the role of teachers and prophets within a wisdom-oriented culture, and – my favorite – the use of parables, are all critical to understand if we are to comprehend the full biblical witness about Jesus Christ.
The Bible calls us “God’s fellow workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9). As we work, God works. As we experience God’s love, we are to share his love so that others can experience it as well. In fact, we cannot understand our faith fully until we share it.
In many ways, sin is like a virus. Like a virus, sin is invisible yet it has symptoms. Like a virus, sin is real, it weakens us and separates us from others. Like many viruses, sin is deadly. Sin brings spiritual death or separation from God. Sin spreads and is a universal pandemic. Like many viruses, sin, too, has no human cure. The Bible is clear that no amount of human effort can remove one sin.
