A Challenge from a Young Pastor to Young Ministry Students
To a young ministry student, You are entering into an exciting time in your ministry journey. A few years ago, maybe in a meeting with your pastor or during a youth event, you sensed a call from God to ministry. Or maybe it was more recent, and you have been slowly trying to discern whether you “desire such an office.” Nevertheless, you are here now and training to be a pastor in a local congregation. In my own experience, this period...
A Case For Gardening
by Sarah E. Benton Contemporary pop culture with its consumerist values tends to associate gardening with the leisure of the elderly and those with antiquated preferences. However, many people in the current cultural landscape have shifted toward more agrarian sensibilities, whether consciously or unconsciously. Families are settling into life lived off the land, growing their own vegetables and raising their own livestock. Others...
A Free Will Baptist Looks at John Piper’s All that Jesus Commanded
An Overview of the Book While John Piper’s All that Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life according to the Gospels is hot off the press, it is actually a revised, second edition of his earlier work, What Jesus Demands from the World (2006). “The new title,” Piper explains, “is intended to make more clear the relevance of this book for every Christian. It deals with every command Jesus gave and how it relates to Christian living...
Recommended Books (Autumn 2023)
Beautiful autumn days beckon us to spend our afternoons and evenings out of doors. Amid all the hustle and bustle of daily life, especially if you have children in school or are in school yourself, it can be difficult to devote time to reading. But good books bring extra light into our lives and open new vistas of understanding about the world around us. So we recommend taking a book out to the porch swing or a favorite clearing in...
Reflections on Pixar: Monsters, Up, and Brave
The animation studio Pixar produced its first movie, Toy Story (1995), when I was a boy. I liked it well enough but did not love it as much as others did. The first Pixar movie to capture my imagination was unquestionably Monsters, Inc. (2001). I found it incredibly creative and infectiously funny. Through the years and decades, Pixar has gained the reputation of producing stories that are qualitatively superior to other animated...
The Family Table
by Emily Vickery The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Corrie is the smell of a home-cooked meal. Corrie was a former youth group member from my parents’ early ministry, and she came back into our lives when I was entering middle school. She is ten years younger than my parents, and I thought she was cool. She taught me how to style my curly hair and how to dress for my 5’1 frame, lessons that seemed vital to my...
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