What I’ve Learned from Practical Church Planting Books
While I was in college, I began to think that God was calling me to the ministry of church planting. I considered opportunities in southern California and the Midwest. Ultimately, God opened the door for me to plant a church in Gallatin, Tennessee. When I began considering all that planting a church would involve, I quickly noticed two common approaches in church planting books. The first approach was more theoretical in nature,...
Nursing Home Ministry: Getting Started
In my previous essay I provided a biblical rationale for the ministry of nursing home visitation. But what may such a ministry look like practically? Ministry is always contextual. Fulfilling this ministry will look different from place to place. However, despite where or who you may be, here are some suggestions for church members and leaders. Remember the Difficult Conversations People Are Having: Ministry requires teachers to equip...
Nursing Home Ministry: A Critical Need
Visiting widows with my mother is a vivid memory from childhood. My father and mother did much to help the elderly in our small community, but they especially cared for widows who were either childless or whose children didn’t live locally. For my mother, this ministry often meant preparing a pecan pie and taking me with her on a visit to someone’s home. I recall these visits well for two reasons. First, I remember trying to entertain...
Love and Marriage and Literature
I’ll be getting married this June. Thus, I have been thinking about what love is; how I should love well; what a good, Biblical marriage looks like; and how I should live as a wife. Fortunately, I have not been left alone in my search for answers to these questions. God, in His grace and sovereignty, grants His children insight into these matters through a variety of means. First, I am thankful most of all that God Himself has given...
The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: A Review
When people think of Thomas Helwys, they often think of religious liberty, and rightfully so. Yet Helwys’s writings address far more than religious liberty. Marvin Jones seeks to demonstrate this in his recent monograph The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: The Foundational Contributions of Thomas Helwys.[1] Jones contends that while many scholars have considered Helwys’s Mystery of Iniquity to be a work focused primarily on...
First Aid for Emotional Hurts: An Interview with Eddie Moody
“People need the Lord. At the end of broken dreams, He’s the open door,” sings Steve Green. Indeed, people need the Lord because they are broken. They need to be mended and comforted. This is the tone and approach Eddie Moody takes in the opening chapter of First Aid for Emotional Hurts: A Biblical Approach to Helping People through Difficult Times, revised and expanded (Nashville: Randall House, 2018). Believers are tasked with the...
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