March 2, 2025
Insight into how we might help ministry leaders in the U.S. and abroad remain faithful in their vital vocational roles, ensuring ministry leaders in the church worldwide produce deeply rooted kingdom fruit.
August 1, 2021
(Another 25th anniversary column from David Faust, this one from 2001.) Missionary friends have invited me to come to their countries and teach, but in every case I’ve received more than I’ve given.
March 1, 2021
“The greatest source of power available to a leader,” said Dr. James O’Toole, founding director of Neely Center for Ethical Leadership at the University of Southern California, “is the trust that derives from faithfully serving followers.” Three decades earlier, Howard Hendricks, longtime professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, told a Promise Keepers rally, “The greatest crisis in America is a crisis of leadership, and the greatest crisis of leadership is a crisis of character.” During the past several decades, a proliferation of books, journals, degree programs, podcasts, online conferences, and DVD series have addressed the issues of character and trust in leadership in virtually all arenas
August 10, 2020
By David Faust “Sin blinds you, then it binds you, then it grinds you.” I don’t know who first said those words, but they ring true. Disobedience to God leads to a downward cycle. “After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:15)—and that’s true on both a personal level and a societal level. Someone observed, “First we overlook evil. Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute anyone who still calls it evil.” There are two
By LeRoy Lawson Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted Richard Beck Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016 Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense Francis Spufford New York: HarperOne, 2014 The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan Rick Perlstein New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015 What should we do when faith falters, either our faith in God or our faith in no God? Either loss is a life-changer. Like most serious believers, I have had my own doubts. I am not alone. Some of my best friends have
February 14, 2017
By Mark A. Taylor Confronted with doubters, some Christians display one of two unfortunate reactions. Some look away. They prefer not to think about serious skeptics. Isolated inside the church with no real relationships outside it, they are comfortable with a faith they themselves may never have questioned. They ignore the skeptic. But others attack. They can”t pretend doubters don”t exist. They”ve heard the cynical sneers about Christianity from public critics, and the arguments make them angry. They view disbelievers as the enemy, and their instinct is to defend the faith with sarcasm, condemnation, or insult. Those in either group
February 12, 2017
By Steve Carr What I”ve learned, and what I”m still asking, after conversations with those who left the faith. “It was Santa Claus.” As Bill said it, he looked me straight in the eyes without blinking. I thought he was joking. “Are you being serious,” I asked. “Santa Claus pushed you toward atheism?” Bill nodded his head. “It sounds stupid, but that guy really did a number on me.” If you”re like me, it”s impossible to reminisce about childhood without talking about church. Faith was the priority of my family”s social life. After home and school, I spent the majority
June 20, 2014
By Jonathan Williams “I don”t need your God to make me good.” I was having lunch with Tom, a close friend and devout atheist. I ordered the Reuben. He went light with the salad. The topic was heavy. “Then what”s your foundation for goodness and morality?” I asked him. “What stops you from being a compulsive liar or a career con artist?” “Morality and goodness are biological,” Tom replied, “they”ve been with us from the beginning. That”s how our species not only survives, but also thrives.” I brought up the late Jeffrey Dahmer, a convicted murderer and sex offender, who,
June 14, 2014
By David Faust Visiting someone in the hospital doesn”t seem like a big deal. For many of us, it”s a routine part of ministry. About 50 years ago in India, a Christian named Fred David visited a forlorn 17-year-old in the hospital. The young man David visited was hospitalized because he had tried to end his own life by drinking poison. Fortunately, the attempted suicide failed and the teenager was going to recover. Fred handed a Bible to the patient”s mom, showing her the page containing John 14:19, where Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live.” The young
January 12, 2014
By Jeff Faull We used to call them “church shoppers.” It was often a pejorative term, intended to characterize those who were always looking to be served rather than to serve, to get rather than to give, and to consume rather than to contribute. Ironically, we often end up structuring the church in ways that encourage and cater to that consumer mind-set and behavior. In so doing we run the risk of reducing spiritual things to mere commodities. We dilute the gospel to palatable niceties. We obscure the concept of sacrifice and service. We run the risk of being people-centered
September 8, 2010
By Mark A. Taylor Perhaps you”re familiar with Anne Rice, the world-known novelist who left the Catholic faith of her childhood to become an atheist and then returned to a vibrant belief in God. Perhaps you know about her Facebook post July 28. “Today I quit being a Christian,” she wrote. “I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “˜Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It”s simply impossible for me to “˜belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.” The next day she added, “My faith in Christ is central to my life. .
January 25, 2009
By David Fiensy One might well ask, “How can atheism teach Christians anything?” After all, atheists do not even have the basic starting point correct. Yet atheism holds a fascination for many people in the Western world right now, and that is the reason Christians need to think about it. This is the era of the so-called “new atheism.” This movement has spawned an in-your-face, aggressive, and even rude attitude. Even the titles of some of the books demonstrate the authors” aggression””The God Delusion and God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, for instance. Yet people seem drawn to
December 7, 2008
By LeRoy Lawson “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” the very obviously alive Mark Twain loved to quip. Reporting on God”s death has also been exaggerated. In1966, for example, Time blackened its April 8 cover to feature the death of God. Theologians like William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer had gravely delivered the eulogy in learned disquisitions. God would be missed, but we could manage without him, they assured us. Now in the 21st century along come Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Daniel Dennett (A Natural Phenomenon), and Christopher Hitchens
May 4, 2008
By Leroy Lawson The Best American Spiritual Writing 2007, ed. Philip Zaleski (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). The title raises several questions, doesn”t it? What exactly is “spiritual” writing? How do you decide what”s the best? And who is qualified to say? Philip Zaleski”s anthology doesn”t answer. The literary range is wide: essays, poetry, meditations, biographies. The sources are varied: Buddhism, Christianity, atheism, New Age, Islam, and to be determined. The quality is, as you would expect, uneven. But the reader who perseveres to the end will be rewarded, for there, in the penultimate selection, is Garry Wills objecting
April 12, 2006
An atheist sells “the chance to save his soul” and attends church to critique it publicly. Mark A. Taylor argues Christianity can’t be judged into belief—Easter points to Jesus himself as the center of faith.
Sponsored
Sponsored
Sponsored
April 28, 2026
Rick Cherok
April 28, 2026
David Faust
April 28, 2026
Rick Cherok