Category Reformation21

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Discipleship in the Reformed World

When I was a Southern Baptist pastor, all I heard about was discipleship. It was their “thing,” almost to a fault. When I moved into the Reformed world, I never heard anything about discipleship. Perhaps my experience is an anomaly…

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Lonely in a Crowd

The weight of loneliness hit me really hard a few weeks ago. I couldn’t explain why. I live on the same property as my family and see them daily. Our small, flourishing church plant provides plenty of weekly fellowship and…

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The Ministry of Presence

Chaplain Mike Gilson in the Spiritual Care Service unit of San Diego’s Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center shared about his visits with a Vietnamese patient and husband who both spoke little English.  The wife had terminal cancer, but later on…

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My favorite Books of 2024

My Favorite Books of 2024   Daily Doctrine by Kevin DeYoung  This is my pick for the Book of the Year. DeYoung has taken a rather unique and refreshing approach to a volume of systematic theology. It is composed as…

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Hospitality: The Forgotten Qualification

When considering the qualifications for elders, “able to teach” is often recognized as the one qualification uniquely required for the office (1 Tim. 3:2, Tit. 1:9). Certainly, the unique role of elders centers on “the ministry of the word” (Acts…

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The Art of Getting Out of the Way

There’s an old trope that gets applied to a lot of different subjects, “It’s both an art and a science.” Whether the skill in question is drilling wells, acting, or writing fiction, this is a way of conveying that there…

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From Covenant to Confessional

I shouted over the many voices crammed into the Twin Lakes cafeteria, “I went to Covenant!” The man was likely the same age as me and looked very confused by this answer. “How did you end up here?” I am…