Series: Mark A. Taylor

December 29, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Four Days Later””Still Time to Ponder

By Mark A. Taylor Today, just four days after Christmas, some of us are ready for the celebration to be over. We”re tired of travel (or worn out by our houseguests), we”ve exchanged or returned gifts that weren”t right, and we”re looking forward to a little rest or maybe even getting back to work. And even if we loved every minute of our family Christmas, we may still pause to wonder whether the impact of the incarnation penetrated our celebration. And so, today, here”s a word of inspiration. The following is adapted from a column first posted here two years

December 22, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

We Do Not Suffer Alone

By Mark A. Taylor Death intrudes into thousands of lives every day. But to each individual losing someone close, death seems like a singular experience. I remember the comment of a good friend whose dad died decades ago. He returned to his job after several days grieving with his family and found everything there decidedly unchanged. “Everyone”s just doing what they usually do, working on their own tasks as if nothing has happened,” he said. Here he was, trying to cope with his life that had been upended. But everyone around him, it seemed, was getting along just fine. This

December 15, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

The End of an Era

By Mark A. Taylor “Do you still have a job?” The text came to my phone Friday evening from a friend cross-country who had just read the news about David C. Cook”s purchase of Standard Publishing assets. I assured him I”m still working at CHRISTIAN STANDARD, even though most of Standard”s product lines went with the sale. David C. Cook, an evangelical publisher with almost as many years of service as Standard Publishing, has acquired Standard”s complete line of Standard Lesson Commentary products as well as our Heartshaper Sunday school curriculum and related teaching resources for children. The purchase effectively

December 8, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

The Greatest Impact

By Mark A. Taylor How should we worship? Maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that throughout church history, Christians have answered that question in wildly differing ways. As both Paul Blowers and Tom Lawson point out this month, lavish artistic expressions of worship centuries ago eventually gave way to abandonment and even destruction of them by Protestant reformers. The motivation for each approach was the desire to please and praise God. Across Christendom today, we find everything from formal liturgy in classic settings to simple, quiet contemplative gatherings in smaller groups to exuberant, loud, guitar-driven, drum-syncopated megachurch

December 1, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Moving Beyond “˜Color Blind”

By Mark A. Taylor Many thoughts have threatened my internal comfort zone since I attended a daylong conference on racial unity outside Baltimore, Maryland, last month*. I came face-to-face with the reality of racism that still flourishes in my country. I came to understand the privilege that comes automatically, systemically to white people in America. And I was forced to consider how that privilege has benefitted me and hurt others. I came to see that Jesus” prayer for unity will not be answered when Christians of different races distrust or blatantly denigrate each other. (Nor will it happen when members

November 24, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Why Weren”t They More Thankful? (Part 2)

By Mark A. Taylor As we bustle through Thanksgiving with our eyes on Christmas, many of us Americans are counting the cost of our Christmas gift-giving. “Please bring a $25 item for the gift exchange.” “How much does your brother spend on us for Christmas?” “What will we give Sue and Bill? I can”t remember what they gave us last year.” The thread through most of this is a concern to “stay even,” a compulsion coming largely from pride (we don”t want to be seen as cheap) and selfishness (we have our own expenses, after all; we can”t let this

November 17, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Why Weren”t They More Thankful? (Part 1)

By Mark A. Taylor I love the family times, the meal times, the kick-off-the-holiday-season times that usually surround Thanksgiving Day. But every year as the holiday approaches, I”m tempted to wonder if we should change its name. Considering how most Americans actually celebrate, maybe we should call it Have a Crowd for Dinner Day or Shop Early for Big Savings Day or Watch Some Football Day. Don”t misunderstand. I don”t mean to be a grump. As I said, I”m grateful to have the day off and to spend it with people close to me. But I am a bit chagrined

November 10, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Changes for the Better?

By Mark A. Taylor Every missions leader and missionary watcher will tell you missions is different these days. A generation or two ago, missionaries departed for a foreign field with the intent to spend their lives there. Now “long-term missionaries” stay for maybe two or three years. Those days, and in the generations before, missionaries went from the West to the rest of the world, and most American church members assumed “we” had the solution to the problems suffered by “them.” Now missionaries from Asia, Africa, and South America are going all over the world with the gospel. And some

November 3, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Beyond the Ballot Box

By Mark A. Taylor Once again it”s Election Day in America, and as Christians march to the polls to express their convictions, it”s time to remind ourselves why we go and what we hope to accomplish. Do we expect to change America through the ballot box? As candidates bob and weave to attract the Evangelical vote ahead of caucuses, primaries, and the presidential election a full year from now, how much hope are we hanging on their positions and pronouncements? Jennifer Johnson offered her answer in her message Saturday morning at the International Conference on Missions (ICOM) in Richmond, Virginia.

October 27, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Nothing More Valuable

By Mark A. Taylor Maybe most wouldn”t suspect that loneliness, discouragement, temptation, and insecurity are companions of the person leading their church””especially growing, dynamic ministries like those led by the four guests in our most recent Beyond the Standard podcast. But each of them””Ben Cachiaras, Tim Harlow, Eddie Lowen, and Greg Nettle””admitted to at least one of these problems. And all four credited their association with each other as a key to rising above barriers to emotional and spiritual health. They”ve created a group where they”ve found the freedom to confess sins, share doubts, discuss problems and possibilities, and discern

October 20, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Entrepreneurship ≠ Leadership

By Mark A. Taylor Big ideas. Bold initiatives. Novel thoughts and new approaches. Replacement strategies and structures and processes to eliminate the out-of-date. Change. Growth. These are the fruits produced by all good leaders, right? Maybe. It”s certainly true we hear all of these described in leadership seminars and discussed among many ministers and their advisers. But lately it has dawned on me that what some see as leadership is really entrepreneurship. And they are not the same. The entrepreneur is, at least at first, a lone ranger. He (or she) pushes forward compelled by a new idea or a

October 13, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Calculating the Right Answer

By Mark A. Taylor “You don”t own your possessions. Your possessions own you.” Not true for you, you say? Well, try this experiment. Think about your time: For one month keep a running diary of every minute you spend fueling your car, washing your car, or taking your car to the garage. Then add time spent cleaning the house, performing maintenance at the house, decorating, replacing broken appliances, or doing yard work To this log, add any time you”ve spent purchasing, repairing, or maintaining other favorite possessions: electronics, computers, smartphones, and the like. And then add time spent shopping for

October 6, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

About Face

By Mark A. Taylor Yesterday we posted the first in a series of posts this month about integrity. We believe each one will challenge readers to grow deeper, to actually become in greater measure what they seem to be and what they say they want to be. But one aspect needs fuller discussion. None of our other posts specifically addresses how our prayer lives are a measure of our integrity. Yesterday’s post by Randy Gariss touches the issue with his list of four disciplines to achieve integrity. Correctly, he begins with worship, and certainly he includes prayer as a part of that. We posted Gariss”s essay first

September 29, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Annual Panic

By Mark A. Taylor Every August and September, I was gripped by panic. As part-time education minister with a smaller church (now it”s mega), I was responsible to recruit Sunday school workers for every age level and to staff a fully graded program on Wednesday nights. When kids choirs took a break on Sunday evenings (we had Sunday-night church back in those days), my job was to create and find workers for kids” classes then too. In a church of a few hundred, that was a lot of volunteers, and we never seemed to have quite enough. We encouraged people

September 15, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Volunteers: They”re Vital!

By Mark A. Taylor Not long after I left ministry in the local church to come to the nine-to-five office environment at Standard Publishing, I had an epiphany. I had taken for granted the volunteers who had helped me at the church. When I needed them to come to a meeting, they came. When I asked them to teach a class, they taught. When I recruited them to give up time to keep my latest notion from failing, they were there. Meanwhile, I counted everything I did for the church as part of the job they were paying me for.

September 8, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Parenting Predictable, Not Perfect

By Mark A. Taylor Which of these videos reminds you of an awkward moment at your house? Did you ever lose a hamster? Did you ever make yourself sick making your kids happy? Did parenting ever take you out of your comfort zone? Well, take heart. “You don”t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.” It”s a message as encouraging for biological parents as it is for those who would adopt. And it”s exactly what Jack Holland told us in our August 20 episode of Beyond the Standard. In fact, he says professional literature on successful families uses

September 1, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Chasing after Integrity

By Mark A. Taylor The October issue of CHRISTIAN STANDARD is devoted to the theme of integrity. As we finish making final corrections before sending it to the printer this week, I know it contains some of the best material we”ve ever published. Surely the issue will prompt soul-searching in every reader. In a world characterized by concern for image management more than private goodness, even Christians too often fail to walk their talk. But a question has come to me in recent days that we do not consider in those pages. What do we do with integrity failures we

August 25, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Recognizing the Body

By Mark A. Taylor I first prepared the following as a Communion meditation for the church where I worship. It occurs to me that it considers a biblical challenge that Christians everywhere do well to remember. We don”t read far in Paul”s first letter to the Corinthians till we see this was a church with problems. “I appeal to you brothers,” he wrote, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and

August 18, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Just Say Yes!

By Mark A. Taylor Most of us obey most of the laws most of the time. But how often could we say the law delights us? How often is our obedience grudging (tax time is coming), or forced (radar detectors, anyone?), or incomplete? How often do we think about the law, any law, with gratitude and joy? The news today is full of protests against bad law-keeping and unjust treatment of some citizens. But these exceptions underline the value of the law; without it there would be no recourse against those who violate it. Theft is forbidden, murder is punished,

August 11, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Shopping for a Church? Check Here!

By Mark A. Taylor Welcome to Choose-a-Church.com, the one-stop shopping source where you can find exactly the church you”re looking for . . . FIRST SECTION: Please tell us a little about yourself. Check every phrase that accurately completes the following sentence: “I”m looking for another church because . . .” “¢ I”m not being fed at my current church (indicate whether you”re referring to sermons or fellowship dinners). “¢ My current church changed something (indicate whether or not the church asked your permission). “¢ I don”t like the way my current church spends money. (If you check this sentence,

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