When you talk to a family on deputation for the mission field, you sense a lot of excitement. They can’t wait for the traveling to be finished. They can’t wait to board the airplane. They are eager to serve the Lord in a foreign country.

This past summer, God opened the door for us to be able to have a summer ministry intern come serve in our church. For the past couple of years, it has been something that I had wanted to do, but was uncertain about whether it was worth the financial burden on our church and the administrative burden on me.

I hope that by now you have seen California’s AB 2943 on the news or in your social media streams. This broad-sweeping piece of legislation is a threat to religious liberty and freedom of speech across the state and, by setting a precedent, across the country.

The life I enjoy today started when I was young. I was reared in a Christian home and chose to marry a preacher when I was seventeen years of age. On many occasions I have had the privilege to teach teen girls. I always tell them, “You make the biggest decisions of your life when you are too young to make them.”

When God sends revival to a church, there is a natural interest in prolonging the good effects of what has happened. One of the most important factors in extending the blessings of the revival is for the church to adopt what could be called “a revival M.O.”

When I was a younger pastor, I loved serving the Lord. I lived full out for Christ and for the church the Lord allowed me to shepherd.

As the leader of a couple’s class, new Christians will often ask me: “What are the main ingredients to having a happy marriage?”

It seems there is a good amount of talk these days about people “collaborating.” Both collaboration and cooperation are legitimate and good words. To collaborate means to “co-labor, or to labor together.” To cooperate means “to operate together.”

One of the blessings of teamwork in local church ministry is the opportunity to invest in those who serve.

What happened? I often contemplate this question when I consider the condition of many young leaders in my generation (and many in the generation before mine as well). It seems like my social media feeds often have reports from friends made in high school and Bible college or ministry colleagues who have gone hook, line, and sinker for some trendy, new philosophy of ministry.