Student ministry is often where rules about minors break down in the church. Student ministries don’t need fewer rules than children’s ministries. They need different rules. Though rebellion seems to be a rite of passage for many teenagers, they are far more receptive to guidance than you might think.
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Most groups in local churches don’t fall apart overnight. They slowly drift from life-giving to maintenance-driven. Leaders don’t usually quit because they don’t care anymore – they quit because the structure they are working inside can’t sustain long-term disciple-making.
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Too often, our approach to the Bible is problematic because we want to be instant experts. We have very little tolerance for unanswered questions, forgetting that answers come as we keep visiting the text.
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We’ve seen a steady decline in both Christian identity and church attendance with each passing generation in the U.S. A stat that should concern all church leaders is that among teenagers who were active in church for at least a year during high school, 2 out of 3 are not attending shortly after graduation.
Churches hoping to engage younger generations must move beyond comfort, familiarity and fear, says Illinois pastor Rayden Hollis.
It’s spiritual warfare against the evangelist. That’s one reason—a reason we don’t often think about—that evangelism is hard.
The proliferation of non-peer reviewed information together with advancements in Artificial Intelligence has propelled us from an age of information to an age of disinformation.
The Christian faith is a singing faith. A singing saint brings deep joy to the heart of God. There is not a chapter and verse in Scripture that explicitly states this, but when you consider the sum of singing commands and the role singing plays at so many critical points in redemptive history, we easily come to the conclusion that our God really, really likes to hear his people sing.
But how do we put the lust within to death? The answer is only found in Scripture. We put lust to death in the same way we put all habitual sins in our hearts to death: by loving God and His design more than we love our sin (Colossians 3:1-17). A lust problem is a love for God problem.
Fear is an enormous challenge for many of God’s people. Milly Jones, in a blogpost under the heading of Milly’s Scribblings, discovered 145 Bible verses encouraging God’s people who battle fear.
The choir was singing while we were in the middle of serving the Lord’s Supper one Sunday morning. The ushers were halfway down the middle aisle when the sanctuary’s rear doors flew open and a young man stepped in the aisle and began yelling.
Faithful Christian families face parenting challenges. How can a church family support the family during difficult days? Denise George offers helpful tips in this article.
Couples typically promise they'll be faithful in sickness and in health but very few actually think about what they are promising. It is the grace of God that helps us fulfill the covenant promise with compassion and a servantheart.
Chuck Lawless suspects all churches have at least one of these persons. Baby believers are those young believers who are just now learning how to walk with Christ, but who are fresh in their faith. Believers who are babies, on the other hand, are usually longer-term believers who don’t act like mature believers.
