In class, philosopher Cornell West once said that every story that has ever been told is either a tragedy, a story with a sorrowful ending, a comedy, a story with a happy ending, or a tragicomedy, a story with elements of both. The tragicomedy, West said, is the most difficult story to tell, but it...

4 Ways To Be Quick To Listen, Slow Speak

Rob Hurtgen writes that a quick tongue can cause damage to our relationships. He provides four practical ways to cultivate the practice of being slow to speak. 

How Does She Do It? The Making of an Atypical Woman

God grows us in ways we don't always...

"Whereas the Lord was there."-- Ezekiel 35:10

Edom's princes saw the whole country left desolate, and counted upon its easy conquest; but there was one great difficulty in their way--quite unknown to them--"The Lord was there;" and in his presence lay the special security of the chosen land....

“How do you do it?”

The most common question I get from well-meaning friends and peers when they find out I’m

1. The director of Women’s Ministry

2. At my complementarian church

I think they ask because they know me well. They know I’m opinionated. They know I have a...

One of my favorite stories is Pilgrim’s Progress written by John Bunyan. It is the story of Christian leaving the City of Destruction in search of salvation which is found only in the Celestial City, which is heaven. It is an allegory depicting the Christian life all the way.

There is one...

In my previous post, I unpacked the Send Network’s value of brotherhood. This value is important and paired with multiplication and restoration, the values are changing the culture of church planting.​

Being part of a family is a good thing. Creating a brotherhood that stands shoulder to...

I’ve been a local church pastor for more than thirty years, but I’ve never had a year like 2018. Honestly, it was brutal, far and away the most difficult season I’ve ever had in ministry. I experienced a church leader’s nightmare.​ Through a grueling five-month...

I went to the office early to work on my Thanksgiving sermon before the rest of the team arrived. I stopped by the Waffle House on the way. As I sat at the counter, a man in a nearby booth asked, “Is that Psalm 100 on your file?” It was. I was working on several projects at the...

I’ve never met a person who said that discipline was pleasant. Parents battle their kid’s temper tantrums with heavy hearts and tears, athletes break their bodies in order to build strength and train for victory, and reckless drivers receive expensive tickets so the roads are...

I am composing this as I sit next to my daughter’s hospital bed. For several days now she has been fighting dengue fever, a mosquito-borne virus common in Cambodia where she spent the previous two weeks. She was working with a ministry that cares for children who are trapped in a cycle of...

While the Bible teaches marriage is a covenant, our culture sees marriage as a contract. While Christians often repeat the claim that marriage is a “covenant, not a contract,” what does this mean? I’d like to suggest eight differences between seeing marriage as a contract as...

Gospel doctrine creates gospel culture. As the gospel message goes out, a community around Jesus Christ is formed. When God joins his word with his people, he gives power to the church as an outpost of the kingdom of heaven. Ray Ortlund puts it simply:

• Gospel doctrine - gospel culture =...

The young man shifted nervously on my doorstep, his cheerful face belying his anxiety. He wore the customary white short-sleeved shirt and black tie and carried a backpack. He had just knocked on my door and just discovered that I was a pastor.

“Oh good!” he said. “It’s...

Our influence is temporary

It was given to us by God

It can be taken away

One day we will give an account for how we used it

(Andy Stanley)

“Influence” is a buzzword these days, with volumes being written about how to achieve it and steward it well. In our ministry culture, leaders (and...

Lord, Free Me From Pride: Three Ways to Escape Self-Importance

Isaac Adams shares practical ways that we can kill the sin of pride. He writes about prayer, confession, and lifting one another up. 

Lottie Moon Did Not Waste Her Singleness

"Single people in the church continually act as a reminder...

"I know how to abound."-- Philippians 4:12

There are many who know "how to be abased" who have not learned "how to abound." When they are set upon the top of a pinnacle their heads grow dizzy, and they are ready to fall. The Christian far oftener disgraces his profession in prosperity than in...

In all of my adult years in the church, I have never heard a pastor volunteer up a Sunday sermon on The Trial by Ordeal God gave Moses in Numbers 5 for a jealous husband who suspects his wife has been unfaithful. I can't remember hearing a sermon on the instructions in Deuteronomy 21 on the process...

This post is part of a series by Todd Chipman. Read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

We have come now to the final post in this series on foster care and adoption ministries. Over the last several weeks, I have suggested that FTC readers hoping to foster or adopt in 2019 will...

“The history of the world is but the biography of great men,” argued Thomas Carlyle, the proponent of what has come to be known as the “Great Man Theory of History.” This theory suggests that the broader movements and contours of history all go back to the leadership of...

I get to meet and work with a lot of different churches for my job at the Send Network. I'm often asked what my job entails. When I tell people I work with trainers to help couples start new churches, I get a lot of interesting responses. Some ask, “What’s that?”...

What’s God’s will for your life as a college student? While there are countless mysterious facets to the providence of God, one thing is abundantly clear from the Bible: God intends for you to be fully mature in Christ. To put it another way, God’s will for every Christian is that...

Join Jared Wilson, Owen Strachan, Jason Duesing and more for Midwestern Seminary’s New England Study Tour this spring, May 13th-20th.

The New England region is home to a challenging culture with a rich heritage, and you will get to travel its storied roads alongside professors and fellow...

The New York state legislature and women’s rights activists have celebrated loudly at the signing of a law strengthening abortion rights, but our mourning should be louder. A law that was introduced decades ago, presumably to enable action by doctors caught in a moral dilemma – whether...

Here is part of an account of an incident involving General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s chaplain, the Confederate officer, Dr. Robert Lewis Dabney:

Dr Dabney rode with General Jackson into the very thickest of the fight, on many a hard fought field. The men used to say of their...

Are you a kind person or a nice person?

If you thought those two adjectives were basically the same thing, think again! Kindness and niceness might look similar, but underneath the surface, the two attributes are completely different. And that difference can...