church growth; healthy church

Young children love family reunions more than the adults who host them. Children are focused on who will be there, who will they play with, who will tell the best story, who will remember their name, who will lift them high off the ground to say, “Look how big you are!” It is good we start life as...

Estifanos of Gwendagwende – Reformer and Martyr Around the time when John Wyclif and Ian Hus shook the western church by challenging its authority and traditions, a lesser-known monk did something similar in Ethiopia. He was known as Abba Estifanos (in English, Father Stephen). Estifanos’s Early...

At face value, the 9 th commandment could be read as merely a prohibition against committing perjury or lying under oath. However, this commandment encompasses so much more. According to both the Westminster Shorter and the Baptist catechisms, “The ninth commandment requires the maintaining and...

The Spiritual Marriage between Christ and His Church Believers tend to regard our union with Christ as a merely spiritual or even mystical bond. But 16th-century Italian priest-turned-Protestant theologian Gilorama Zanchi maintained that our spiritual marriage with Jesus joins us as one flesh with...

Agnes and Margaret Smith and Their Crucial Discovery Agnes and Margaret Smith lived at a time when scholars were raising new and disturbing questions about the Bible. Is it reliable? Having being copied by hand, how do we know that it is not full of errors or even deliberate variations? And when...

25 Inspiring Quotes from Women in Church History “I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.” [1] - Vibia Perpetua (c. 182-203) was arrested by imperial decree in Carthage, North Africa, together with her servant Felicitas and three other Christians. She was executed the...

It’s doubtfully a surprise to anyone to say that we live in an age of increasing division and polarization. This fact seems to accentuate the need for each of us to use wisdom in how we speak and engage with one another. It’s likely that each of us can look back at times in our lives when, in...

Alopen and the Missionary Monks of the Church of the East In 635, Emperor Taitsung (598–649) of China found Christianity so impressive that he wrote: “The meaning of the teaching has been carefully examined; it is mysterious, wonderful, calm; it fixes the essentials of life and perfection; it is...

In a few short weeks many of us will gather around a table loaded with food to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. For many it will be a day of feasting and family fun. For others, they may be too sick to eat, too filled with grief to laugh, or too busy to slow down and enjoy the day...

Dr. Wayne Spear writes, “The collection for the relief of famine suffered in Jerusalem occupied Paul’s attention and organizing skills for several years during his third missionary journey. Since the apostle, with his great zeal for evangelism, gave his time and energy to an international and...