The Peril of Potted Plant Christianity Jeff Medders: Sure, they are next to each other, but they aren’t connected in the soil, they aren’t sharing the spray from the hose. Their roots are restricted. They don’t pull and tug when one is moved. These plants are together, but they are also alone. How many of our church communities are just...

A Question to Ask Every Time You Open Your Bible Jairo Namnún: I fear that might just be the case with many of us today. We can spend hours reading, reciting, singing, and talking about the Bible, without seeing any significant fruit. We go through the Bible, but the Bible doesn’t go through us. And it just might be...

Dear Church Member, Your Shepherd Is Also a Sheep Sean DeMars: Your pastor is a shepherd, but he’s still a sheep. You can serve him by making sure he’s able to attend conferences, workshops, and pastoral groups that will build him up. Shepherd him even as he seeks to do the same for you. I have two brothers in my congregation who are...

Will We Go When Wisdom Calls? David McLemore: When Christ as Wisdom calls us to eat and drink, he’s calling us to more than a meal at the Sage’s house. On the night before he died, he stood before his disciples at the last supper and “took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples,...

We Dare Not Lose the Psalms Trevin Wax: There’s a reason why leaders like Billy Graham and Tim Keller adopted the habit of reading five psalms a day, in order to make their way through the psalter 12 times a year. “There are other prayers in the Bible,” Keller writes, “but no other place where you have an entire course...

The Gospel of Inclusion Is Far Too Narrow Trevin Wax: One of the ways error can creep into the church is when people attempt to simplify the Christian faith by picking up one truth—a real truth that makes up part of the Christian faith—and then holding tightly to it while letting go of other important truths. Over time, that one truth,...