God’s Planned Obsolescence

MY WIFE AND I, WITH FIVE OTHER COUPLES, planted a church in 2002. In the weeks before we began, two friends took me aside separately to admonish us. “Don’t we already have enough churches in Spokane? Do we really need more?”  There are at least two reasons why...

What Faithfully Sharing the Gospel Looks Like

I INVITED A FRIEND OUT TO COFFEE. He is older and doesn’t have long to live. Because I care deeply for him I looked for an opportunity to share the gospel. We visited for about 45 minutes about things we had in common. Finally, I screwed up my courage. “Do...

Missionary Joy In Serbia

I JUST COMPLETED TWENTY HOURS OF TEACHING the theology of marriage and parenting to a group of pastors in Serbia. Not Siberia on the frozen tundra, or Syria in the Middle East, but Serbia, a beautiful nation in the Balkans, just south of Hungary, north of Greece, and...

American Church In Crisis?

It is not uncommon to hear people complain at the news of a church plant. “We don’t need new churches,” they say. But David T. Olson argues the opposite. In his book The American Church in Crisis: Groundbreaking Research Based on a National Database...