Roots and Renewal: Why History Matters
Over the greater part of a decade, I served as a missionary in Central Europe, where the currents of history run deep. If you have ever traveled through that part of the world, you will have noticed something remarkable: though secularism has asserted its dominance, Christianity’s imprint remains unmistakable. It lingers not only in the […]
The Purpose of Lent? An Invitation of Decrease and Increase
I never quite understood Ash Wednesday when I was younger. My home church never emphasized anything about Lent, or even Good Friday for that matter. In my experience growing up in church, winter was over, spring started springing, then it was time for Easter Sunday! That meant getting up before the crack of dawn, putting […]
A Lesson from the Church in Croatia
“Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” (John 13:35, NLT) In the years since Croatia’s break from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, evangelical Christians in the country have both enjoyed and endured a burgeoning of religious expression. And with this newfound freedom, the question has now […]
The Importance of Reading Scripture Out Loud
It is a fascinating fact of intellectual history that, in antiquity, reading was not the silent, solitary endeavor we assume today, but rather an event of the spoken word—aural, communal, performative. Words in text, in other words, were not merely for the mind but for the ear. Consider the account in Acts 8:30. Philip, upon […]
A Place To Belong: Church as the Catalyst for True Religion
“God sets the lonely in families.” —Psalm 68:6a, NIV In 2013, The New York Times ran an article about a former Methodist minister looking for a fulfilling life after giving up her faith in God.[1] “I didn’t know what life would be like without church,” she said. “There is no community. There is no social […]
Revitalized Churches Embrace Spiritual Parenting
When my son was young, I hadn’t yet learned to be the father I wanted to be. I was wrapped up in all of “my” things, and my tunnel vision didn’t allow me to always see other things that should have been important. I was focused on growing a student ministry, growing as a leader, […]
The Unintended Consequences of the Modern Church
It’s a good season to reexamine the effectiveness of the modern church. Our commitment, as RENEW.org leaders, is to continually go back to Scripture, to restore and prioritize what it teaches. We face a challenge because in the last fifty years, as church leaders have sought more effectiveness in our churches, we have come to […]
Church Is Boring? 3 Times It Actually Is
When someone says or thinks that church is boring, what is it exactly that they are bored by? Here are three times a church gathering actually is boring—to us and, I want to suggest, to God as well. Smiling through small talk can be boring. In a commercial, a young woman walks up to the […]
