Category – Practical Studies

A retired football player recently made headlines when he was flummoxed by the fact that he was not nominated to the pro football hall of fame. On the one hand, the player has a point. He was one of the NFL’s top players and has the statistics to prove it.…
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I can remember that over the course of 24 months I had more than ten families tell me that they were re-locating due to job transfers. When I received the first intimations of these moves, I thought, “Well, that’s ok. God willing we can find some other families to fill…
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I regularly run across statistics that say that thousands of pastors each year leave the ministry and cite burn out as a chief reason. While some have challenged the accuracy of these statistics, it doesn’t change the fact that burn out is a real problem for many pastors. They graduate…
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Sigmund Freud once famously opined that religion was merely the wishful projection of weak people who were looking for their lost father figure. Freud was echoing the earlier theory of Ludwig Feurbach, who made the same claim. In his book, Faith of the Fatherless: A Psychology of Atheism, Paul Vitz…
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I was recently was perusing the newly added movies to Netflix and amidst the usual collection of never-heard-of movies was a title that caught my attention, The Case for Christ. I knew of the book, written by Lee Strobel, but was unaware that there was a movie. The movie was…
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Preachers often give thought to the question of how they will get the message of the gospel out to people who need to hear it. The church is, after all, supposed to evangelize the nations. While preachers are ready to preach God’s word, there is the practical question of what…
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I can’t help but wonder how many preachers and teachers spend a great deal of time in prayer before they undertake their sacred task. There is a story about Martin Luther King Jr. that illustrates my point. Rosa Parks, the woman who famously started the Montgomery, Alabama bus strike to…
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I’ve recently befriended a young man who is in the process of undergoing training for an elite military unit. I’m not only impressed by the challenges of the training but also by the young man’s quiet and humble spirit. He has followed his superiors’ instructions and does not divulge the…
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Within any decent-sized congregation there are bound to be some who are widows, usually those that are older, but in some cases, there might be younger widows. In the world outside the church, many might look upon widows as a regular part of life. Death is common and thus widows…
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I regularly receive notices of ministers who have served the church for decades but reach the end of their lives and die. As I read of such men I often wonder who they are and how many lives they impacted for the sake of Christ and his gospel. In the…
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