Counseling has been a significant part of my life, both in study and in doing, as a pastor, and as a counselor who has been in private practice/counseling ministry.   There is a wonderful wealth of counseling training materials for Christians seeking to counsel. 

Now City Church in San Francisco welcomes practicing homosexuals as members.  What does that mean? ‘Member’ can be ambiguous, can it more clearly mean ‘we welcome you to the Lord’s Table?’  There we can study I Cor 11 together. Otherwise ‘member’ could mean just, you are welcome to our ongoing conversation or to join us in our journey to Jesus.

When ISIS released the video of twenty-one Egyptians being beheaded on a Libyan beach, the world blanched once more in shock and horror.   And once more the morally obtuse American government remained silent on two critical points.  The first was that the orange-suited victims were in fact Christians.  And the second was that the perpetrators of their monstrous deaths were in fact radicalized Muslims. 

Author's Note:  This is a paper written for Chinese theological students who have asked me about the value of church history, especially for international students. DCD

Introduction: what is the value of doing church history? I believe the wrong answer goes like this: so we can show how we Reformed are always right. ‘My right answer’ is instead: so we can learn how to communicate the gospel in ways people will deeply understand and value.

Let’s get this out right away: we still have a long way to go. We have longer to go than I thought we did, frankly, after electing our first African American president to the highest political office in the land.

Introductory comment by WRF International Director, Dr. Samuel Logan: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak to a joint session of the U. S. Congress on March 13, 2015, and many evangelical Christians are responding to this planned event citing Scripture, especially the Old Testament. 

As a Christmas gift to Fidel Castro, President Obama unilaterally announced that the United States would end its fifty-two year embargo of Cuba and begin taking steps to restore normal relations.

Call it Covenant, that the Lord has made solemn promises to us. His character is on the line, he glories in what he commits to do for us. But wait a minute, those kind promises still have an ‘if’’ in them, if we do what he tells us. That’s the way life is, isn’t it? Over here is our only hope, the Lord and his promises. Over there is our ‘if’ part. How can they fit together?

How can the gospel be more meaningful? Is it enough that we think about it once a week for an hour or so, while the rest of the time our thinking and acting is driven by our secular culture?

Outside Fire Department Station 4 in Utica, New York, a hand-made sign stands propped against the front wall.  It reads, “Happy Birthday Jesus We Love You.”  Predictably, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the mayor demanding the sign be removed.  The sign is a “religious endorsement,” the group asserted.  The mayor replied citing legal opinion that the city is within its rights to keep the sign.  The battle continues.

One must ever bear in mind the occupation of Barak Obama.  He is often referred to as a professor, an expert on Constitutional Law.  But that is not it.  Barak Obama from his beginnings has been a “Community Organizer.”  Even in the White House, that is what he remains.

As we work with God’s word, the ‘so what’ part is hard but necessary.  After we hear a thorough sermon on what God did and said back then, then we experience one of two things: #1 nothing much, maybe the preacher’s asking you to apply this to your life without telling you how, or #2 the preacher’s giving you some real help doing that.