Tom Elliff

By all rights, if any evangelicals should understand the doctrine and practice of baptism, it should be Southern Baptists.

DEL CITY, Okla. (BP)--You can build a Kingdom family. Whoever you are, and in whatever circumstances you may presently find yourself, it is possible for you to both become a member of God's Kingdom family and to begin building a Kingdom family according to God's blueprint.

It would be difficult to estimate how much has been lost to God's Kingdom because of indecision on the part of its leaders. Faced with a multitude of issues, it just seems easy, somehow, to put off critical decisions until another day. I remember listening as the exasperated wife of a pastor lamented the struggles he had with decision-making. She said she felt he just dragged decisions around behind him like the tin cans tied behind the car of newlyweds. Periodically, the strings would come loose, and a can would fall off. "That's the way it seems to be with my husband," she said. "Most of our decisions are made for us as the result of forfeited opportunities."

What is the single characteristic that most distinguishes those who are members of God's Kingdom Family? To put it into the words of the Kingdom Family commitment, they are, above all, characterized by a "passion for fulfilling the Great Commission." They view life with an eye for sharing the gospel. Bob and Peggy Oxford live […]

Members of God's Kingdom Family take a serious and Bible-centered approach to their management of the resources entrusted to them. While some began their "stewardship pilgrimage" in serious financial difficulty, they have discovered that following God's principles provides a way out as well as a way up. By adherence to these principles, they are now […]

Time Management; Ordering Your Priorities; Making the Most of Your Time; How to Make Your Minutes Count; and Distinguishing the Important from the Urgent. The popularity of subjects like these indicates the struggles we each experience when seeking to use our time wisely. The saying, "I've got places to go, people to see, and things […]

Ask people to describe "church" and you will get a variety of answers. For some, church is more of a place than a fellowship. For others, the association between church and a place is never made because, for differing reasons, they must meet in a wide variety of locations. Still others will tell you that […]

Our society has mastered the art of "compartmentalization." Consider, for instance, the term "Sunday Christians." People have used this term for years to describe those whose worship on Sunday was not matched by the exercise of Christian character throughout the other six days of the week. It is an understatement to say that things have changed! Today, some worshippers are quite comfortable being in church on Sunday morning, hands held high in praise, and a rapturous, eyes-closed smile on their face, all the while anticipating bedding down with another lover by Sunday evening. The other lover by the way may not be their husband or wife, but someone with whom they have established an out-of-wedlock relationship. This is a new and heightened form of compartmentalization; an ability to isolate, or segment, one moment from another; an ability to accommodate certain moral standards in one arena and reject them outright in another.

I met the couple in the hallway of the hospital where I had been visiting with the husband's ailing mother. As we visited briefly, he expressed a concern I have heard on many similar occasions. "Pastor, what do you think we should do with my mother?" This is such an often-asked question that I normally […]

It was a bitterly cold night in early spring. I was a college student serving as a "summer missionary" and for that week, a camp counselor in northern Maine. Before I opened the door to the bunkhouse I could hear the bedlam taking place inside. It was a free-for-all, and I was about to bring […]