My church recently hosted a Vacation Bible School. If you've ever helped out with a VBS before, you know the drill. Hand out flyers in the surrounding neighborhood. Decorate the church building. Distribute prizes ordered from the Oriental Trading Company. Act crazy. And then take a long nap when the week is over, because, for whatever reason, VBS is exhausting. But is VBS...

John Bunyan, the unlikely pilgrim of Bedford, England lived a dream. He lived his beloved and classic dream, The Pilgrim's Progress. From burdened to preacher, and from prisoner to victor, Bunyan's journey mirrored Christian's. John Bunyan was born in November 1628. He lived a godless life until as an adult he married a woman who became his Evangelist by sharing two books...

These considerations were offered byPastor Dan Millerto the members of Eden Baptist Church in May 2016 as preliminary groundwork for helping certain members discern the Lord's direction regarding their potential involvement with a church plant. The points have been altered slightly to reflect their general application to churches in any context who may be facing a similar ...

A young woman was contemplating marriage to a young man. He had not yet proposed, but they continued to discuss the prospect of matrimony. He had chosen pastoral ministry as his life's vocation. She wisely discerned that marriage to a minister would constitute something other than a normal life. A level-headed woman by nature, she determined to weigh her future rationally,...

Waiting can be challenging. This is especially true when it is something good that you strongly desire. Over the past few months, my wife and I have been waiting for God to summon us to a ministry position. As we wait, we wonder at the wisdom of God as He prepares us. Seminary is all about preparing for ministry, yet it can be demanding. The schedule and lack of sleep ca...

Currently, the Wednesday night adult prayer group has been working through Luke's gospel. This study involves reading considerable amounts of Scripture in a short amount of time without being able to engage in deep teaching and discussion of everything that was read. This raises a really good question:is reading such a large amount of text at the expense of deep explanatio...

In this post, I'm going to attempt to answer the question: "How did the church planting partnership between you and Eden Baptist develop?" As is often the case for God's people, our path toward this endeavor has not exactly been a straight and simple one, but here are a few of the key points of that journey. Beginning in 2005, I had the privilege of being part of a new c...

When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the AlmightyBy: Joni Eareckson Tada Steven Estes I think we can all agree that anyone who has lived in a wheelchair for over fifty years with no use of arms and legs, all the while demonstrating true joy and satisfaction in God, has something worthwhile to say about suffering. Joni Eareckson Tada sure does! Two premises steer...

A month ago, I graduated with a Master of Divinity degree from Bethlehem College Seminary. Along with the thousands of hours of study with hundreds of hours in the classroom were the countless hours of learning acquired outside seminary's walls. Like most every person I know, seminarians don't learn their theology in a vacuum. We practice it in our daily lives as husbands...