[Vern], an elder at my church, listened patiently as I described my vision to reach Muslims in South Asia. He then replied, "Tell me about your ministry to Muslims here."

"Well, I don't actually know many Muslims here," I answered. "I'm too swamped with work, school, and ministry at the church to spend much time that way."

Vern then gently asked, "What kind of ministry do you think will better prepare ...

In a 2009 article for Christianity Today magazine, author Jocelyn Green gave readers a glimpse into the lives of different military officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—with special attention given to the responsibility the church has in ministering to those officers. She writes:

Nate Self's military record was impeccable. A West Point graduate, he led an elite Army Ranger outfit ...

In his book The Jesus Revolution, pastor and author Leith Anderson shares a story about the tension that sometimes comes between obeying God and obeying the law of the land. A number of years ago, he and three others were traveling to a Communist country where Christians were regularly being persecuted. They did not have a direct flight to their destination, so they had to stay in a neighboring country ...

Change in giving to religious organizations and churches in 2008: +5.5 percent (a total of $106.89 billion)

Change in overall charitable giving in 2008: –2 percent (a total of $307.65 billion, the first decline in overall giving since 1987)

Here's a little experiment: start a sentence with the words "I believe…," and then finish it with something deeply heartfelt. It is impossible to do without feeling uplifted and stirred.

The need to declare our deeply held beliefs is an irrepressible aspect of being human. In the act of defining what we believe, we define ourselves. I am one who can discern what is true and real and noble and bind ...

I had been serving in the church high school ministry for just over a year. I loved it! It had become my passion. Though I was still a senior in high school, I had been asked to be a campus leader and was doing some teaching under the mentorship of our youth pastor. I knew in my heart that this was training for a lifetime in ministry. I could feel the Holy Spirit working through me. I was having the ...

Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) was a missionary to India who suffered enormously in her life. She once wrote these words:

I have noticed that when one who has not suffered draws near to one in pain, there is rarely much power to help. I have wondered if it can be the same in the sphere of prayer. Does pain accepted and endured give some quality that would otherwise be lacking in prayer? What if every stroke ...

In an interview about his book The Folly of Prayer (IVP, 2009), author and pastor Matt Woodley shared a story about his friend Theresa. Theresa was experiencing what St. John of the Cross calls a dark night of the soul—a period of spiritual loneliness and despair. Over the course of describing her story, listen to how Woodley discovered that what seemed most helpless in his ministry was actually ...

Luis Palau, the Argentine-born international evangelist, describes how God expanded his ministry:

...

And the Lord gave me a verse. It sounds a bit bombastic, sort of big-headed, so I don't like to quote it in public. But to paraphrase, the Lord basically says, "I will open up nations to you." I took it personally, as a word from the Lord, and I wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible, "1966 (February, I ...

In a 2009 article in Time magazine, writer Coco Masters shared a startling statistic: one in five Japanese men and women have seriously considered taking their lives, and each year over the past decade, more than 30,000 people have killed themselves in that country. But Masters surrounded those troubling statistics with the story of Yukio Shige. It's because of Shige that at least 188 Japanese men ...