The Church Needs Tools

The church wants not more consecrated philanthropists, but a disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls who shall be tools and channels of the Spirit ...

Warm = Not So Hot

In my senior year of ministerial studies, I preached part-time in a small local church. Six months passed and none of my professors had come to hear me. ...

Reading Between the Lines

Reading Between the Lines,

or What the Pulpit Committee Really Means:

"We have 246 members on the roll!" means Sunday morning worship attendance ...

The Lost Art of Worship

Worship is the lost chord of evangelicalism.

Marriages in But Not of the Church

Many marriages are not in the context of the church--they're only using the building.

Worship Comes First

If we haven't learned to be worshipers, it doesn't really matter how well we do anything else.

Just One More Consumer Commodity

I often visit newcomers in town and find them to be church shopping. They want to know what they can get out of church. Churches are one more consumer ...

Along for the Ride

Church attendance is infected with a malaise of conditional loyalty which has produced an army of ecclesiastical hitchhikers. The hitchhiker's thumb ...

A Cushy Job

Our church has hard wooden pews, so it was good news when Rev. Watkins announced, "The Ladies Fellowship will refurbish the pews with cushions." Then ...

First-Time Preaching

As a first-year seminarian, I was invited to preach at a local church--only my second time in the pulpit. I was extremely nervous when the big day arrived. ...