Church & Ministry

“Apart from the value of Maslow’s particular understanding of human needs, and the various uses it has been put to in ministry as well as popular contexts, the challenge to rightly relate the temporal and the eternal, the material and the spiritual, is as old as the gospel itself…..the idea that there is some sense in which material needs must be met before spiritual needs can be properly addressed is, indeed, much older than Maslow.” -

If current trajectories continue, American churches will pass a tipping point. Our congregations will begin a likely unstoppable path toward decline that will rival many European churches of the past century. If there is not a significant movement of revitalization, there will be an accelerated rate of decline and death.

“I tested the waters. More than once. I dove into previously forbidden pleasures expecting joy and fulfillment. And for a short time, it sometimes felt like my choices delivered. Ultimately, I was left feeling lonely, ashamed, and used. … The little voice of my conscience whispered that I was treading in dangerous waters, but the voices of the world mocked those concerns.

“Yet another pastor committed suicide. But this time, he was my close friend. And so I keep asking myself: How do I make sense of this? After all, this seasoned pastor wasn’t a phony Saul (1 Sam. 31:4). He was a genuine believer whose life bore much fruit. He wasn’t a guilt-ridden Judas (Mt. 27:5). He loved Jesus and understood Christ’s atonement; he had sound theology.

“Suddenly the whole world is talking about Christian missions. In his own way, John Allen Chau has sparked a conversation that now rages within the church and outside of it.”

“These two current deaths [Charles Wesco and John Allen Chau] so close together and apparently so similar, it behooves the Church to ponder the lives of these men and reflect on the sacrifices made for gospel advance. Is this kind of sacrifice really necessary?

“[I]f you read a book about new urbanism, it doesn’t include churches…. If you look at maps and plans, they don’t assume churches. It’s literally as if in the new urbanism, churches aren’t part of the built environment. But why?” - Patheos

The two issues are the quality of the music, evaluated according to the standards of the genre, and the nature of the music, evaluated according to its suitability to the occasion.

“We often teach our youth that the ‘outside world’ is full of reprobate, evil monsters, and that the moment you graduate from Christian school and step onto a college campus or into a workplace, you’re going to be attacked from all sides—persecuted, mocked and ostracized.” - Pursuing the Pursuer