It is so right that we pause this week to give thanks. That we set aside a day for thanksgiving, for pausing to ponder the overwhelming love and mercy that has been bestowed on us, is a great gift. The practice may even yet cultivate in us more than full stomachs, yielding instead glad and grateful hearts on the year's other more mundane days.

Gospel Reformation Network council member Jon Payne recently published a new article on the GRN website in which he notes that there are dismayed church leaders and members wondering if it’s time to give up on the PCA and leave. In “Should We Stay or Should We Go?” he asks that rhetorical question noting that “It’s a question that more than a few PCA elders and members are asking right now.” 

‘Vision’ may well be an overused word in our world but it's an important word, a deeply Biblical idea that describes the why of the what we give our lives for. Sometimes ‘vision’ may be limited in scope (get through another day), professional (get that promotion), or societal (pass that legislation). Those are vital perspectives, but let me suggest that there’s more to ‘vision’ than meets the eye.

“I don’t see the point in praying. God is going to do whatever he’s going to do whether I pray or not.”

I’ve heard that despairing comment - or something like it - from many people over the years. It seems to me that they’ve either forgotten the great meaning of prayer, communion with God, or the great privilege of prayer, to partner with God to accomplish his will. Or perhaps they’d forgotten both. Have we?

Is the gathered worship of the church more like a concert we attend or an offering we make together? Is it more of a performance for others by a few incredibly gifted individuals, groups, and choirs, or the shared labor of all offered to God? Does it really make any difference?

Pastors need confidentiality too. We also have our need for friends and colleagues with whom we can share our concerns, anguish, views, burdens, distress, and fears, and we cherish those relationships. Sometimes those relationships are spread across great distances and so the use of private correspondence - correspondence openly marked as confidential and which cannot be forwarded to others without the written permission of the parties involved - is one more way we get to talk about the important issues we face in ministry, whether in our congregations and denominations or our own personal lives.

The created order — angels, people, stars, & planets, oceans, mountains, and trees — was fashioned for communion with God, to behold and reflect his bounty and beauty. What does sin do? It undoes the perfect communion and happiness. What does redemption do? It restores it. The Gospel received results in communion restored.

Is worship on a Sunday with a congregation really all that necessary for people to grow in faith? Many people today don’t think so. Nevertheless, I continue to contend that those public services are not only necessary but actually the primary means of our spiritual formation and we need to embrace them with great expectation and joy.

Our friends at Core Christianity asked me last Summer to write a booklet on Satan and his tactics, together with an overview of Christ’s triumph over him. They’ve titled that book, “Can the Devil Read My Mind?”

Our friends at Core Christianity asked me last Summer to write a booklet on Satan and his tactics, together with an overview of Christ’s triumph over him. They’ve titled that book, “Can the Devil Read My Mind?”

“I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Never forget that this cry for mercy arose from a parent suffering in his own child’s pain and crying out for help.

I believe that in this boy's experience and his father's struggle of faith we hear a message for our time.

The first stream flowing into our musical life consists of the songs and hymns that are part of the great story God has written in his Church across the centuries, with admittedly special attention given to the way that story is transcribed in the English-speaking world and the American songbook.

In many Christian circles, you can’t get through many days without someone mentioning “Critical Theory” or “Critical Race Theory”, but when pressed few can describe what they so frequently decry. What is CT? Is it really all that bad? What’s all the hubbub about? When I look for answers to those questions I can share with people, they’re often too long, technical, or academic. I thought some postcard length answers on the issue might be helpful.

Just over twenty years ago I was received into the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) as a minister. I joined a Gospel-proclaiming, grace-saturated Presbytery in a Good-Faith Subscription, warmly Evangelical denomination that was in partnership with other Presbyterian & Reformed Communions.

Since 9/11 the word 'evil' has regained some popular usage in our culture. The painfully essential revelations about the abuse of children and women by men with power in religious, business, political, and entertainment spheres have reinforced our awareness that evil is real and has to be faced. The recovery of ‘evil’ in our public discourse helps us to name certain actions and begin to deal with them in just and proper ways.

Life in soil has its origins in God. On the third day of creation, he spoke to the earth and by his living word brought life to the soil he’d formed and that soil brought forth plants and trees. They in turn ‘yielded seed’, the power to perpetuate life and growth embedded deep within them.

We are passing through an era of disconnection and everywhere I look I see something very much like scattered sheep who need to reconnect with their flock, scattered soldiers that need to reconnect with their unit, and scattered dry bones that need to be rattled and rejoined to re-member the body of Christ.