Who were your most formative influences in life? What experiences have made you into the person you are today? Our families’in both their healthy and dysfunctional forms’continue to shape and reshape all of us well into our old age. Sometimes we feel as if we’ll never be free from their unhealthy influence on us; sometimes […]
Ed Stetzer is executive director of LifeWay Research and a well-known conference and seminar leader. Holding two master's degrees and two doctorates, Stetzer has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches, trained pastors and church planters on six continents, and has written dozens of articles and books. We posed a series of questions about the state of […]
Is a triangle inherently any more moral than a rectangle? Let that seemingly odd question sink in for a few moments. Now, how about a cube and a pyramid? Or perhaps a stone villa or glass-and-steel house? This distinction is what architects call "form"’that is, the physical shape, size, and material quality of the structures […]
It's Father's Day, and Hallmark and other retail stores greatly benefit during this holiday. Revenue is increased as children, quite possibly along with a parent, flock to these venues to purchase cards and other gifts that express gratitude. Children desire to ensure their father knows how much they care about him. It's common, therefore, to […]
Even before he was born, my son interfered with my participation at church. The exhaustion of pregnancy sent me to bed at the same time as evening services began, and when I signed up to provide soup for the Lenten suppers, I had to send the food via my husband so that I could lie […]
Almost every Christian will readily agree that the family is important. Family is the one truly natural institution, and of all the many institutions that influence us through our youth, our families’for better or worse’usually end up shaping us the most. Recent decades have witnessed rather profound changes in cultural attitudes and practices regarding family: […]
Over the last decade, community has been a rising buzzword among Christians in North America. From the emergence of new monastic and missional communities to the publication of books with titles such as From Couch to Community and Lean on Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable and Consistent Community, there is a deep hunger in our age […]
The image of the “nuclear” family has always been an ambiguous one for me. Of course, it’s meant to convey a picture of a centered family, anchored by a mom and a dad, with children orbiting around them as satellites, together comprising one of the basic units of society—an “atomic unit,” if you will. (Part […]
Cole Brown says he was surprised by all of the discouraging advice he received as he was preparing to start a multiethnic church in inner-city Portland, Oregon. In 2006, the now 33-year-old pastor was planting what he described as a charismatic Reformed church, connected to the Acts 29 Network. Dozens of people told him it […]
Late modernity (that is, our day and age) has proved to be surprisingly communal in its ethos. We seek our identity in the groups we affiliate with on Facebook, in the beards and hipster clothing we wear, football teams we religiously root for, professional conferences we attend, dieting strategies we swear by, organic food stores […]
The Reviews section is usually reserved for critical engagement with important books of interest to our readers. We're changing gears slightly in this issue by featuring an excerpt of our friend J. Todd Billing's new book Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ (Brazos Press, 2015), which tackles the tough issues […]
Even more than Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a most unexpected best-seller, especially given the fact that, unlike Hawking's most famous work, this one contains no pictures. It is also probable that the two works have something else in common: many more people own the […]
There are quite a few things in the world today that cause Christians to worry. For example, anxiety levels grow when we think about problems concerning health, finances, political issues, and family hardships. In Mindscape, Timothy Witmer tackles the issue of worry with practical and comforting truths from Scripture. Witmer explains and applies core truths […]
I get it. I'm trying to be the spiritual leader in a home with six sinners who trust in Christ, repent of their sins, and look for something beyond this present age as our hope. God calls me and my wife to do our parts. I am all ears when brothers (yes, usually brothers) encourage […]
