Latest RSSSun, 16 Nov 2025 06:53:43 GMTFor every $100,000 church members give to American churches - only $102 funds missions to Unreached People Groups.People who know missions financing far better than I will say those numbers are likely pessimistic. So let’s imagine they’re off by a factor of 10. That gets us to 1.02 percent for UPGs.Is 1 percent of American church budgets enough for the least reached parts of the world? We’re talking about places where people have virtually no access either to the gospel or to the Scriptures in their languages? Source: Gospel Coalition.Such statistics are difficult to verify, of course. And some modern church leaders would declare that their whole budget is for missions. I would challenge such a sentiment and inquire: Is the modern church really a charity or merely a charity unto itself?

]]>Sun, 16 Nov 2025 06:53:43 GMTWhere Healing Belongs by Larry CrabbWhy would a man redirect his life's work at its zenith?Two years ago, in an interview with Christianity Today, Larry Crabb, a Christian psychologist and best-selling author, announced, "In the end, all counseling—intentionally or not—deals with issues of sanctification. The primary context for healing, then, should be the Christian community, not the antiseptic world of a private-practice therapist."Put simply, Crabb has had a conversion experience, and his new thinking has direct implications for pastoral work.Crabb coined the term eldering to describe what he believes ought to go on in the local church between older, wiser members and younger, struggling men and women. He believes this interaction can often be more redemptive and healing than traditional psychotherapy.Leadership Journal wanted to know what eldering looks like in the local church and how it affects the way pastors care for believers.You've called for new ways that the church can help people change. What's wrong with the current approach?Larry Crabb: Much of the church for too long has had a limited approach to helping people change. I would simply describe it, "Do what's right."The counseling community then came along and said, "No, there's something beneath people's outward problems that's all messed up." They came up with a model that perhaps simplistically I dub, "Fix what's wrong."My understanding is that beneath all the damage, because of the New Covenant, there is something good that God has placed within us-his Spirit and a new heart. Rather than fixing what's wrong or doing what's right, we need to release what's good.A connection between elders and friends awakens within them what is powerful and good.Are you really advocating that "eldering" can replace private-practice counseling?There will always be a place for good therapists. But what they are doing is closer to what the Bible calls "shepherding" than what our culture calls "therapy." And that ... Read more

]]>Sun, 21 Jul 2024 13:45:55 GMTI have often put off taking up this subject and I do so now with considerable hesitation. (footnotes 1,2) The reason why I have this feeling is that I would much prefer to speak on a subject upon which I have more confidence and certainty. The truth is that I once had a good deal of confidence about it but that ended some twenty years ago when, on a summer's day in St Andrews, I purchased a second-hand book entitled, The Theory of Ruling Eldership, by Peter Colin Campbell, Principal of the University of Aberdeen. (3) The reading of that book gave me a considerable shock. While it did not lead me to exchange one view for another, it created in me an uncertainty and convinced me that my former confidence had been largely the result of ignorance. As someone has said: 'The wider the reading, the greater will be the modesty'. Although I have thought and read much on the subject since that time I am still uncertain.Hearing such introductory words you might ask, 'Why take up the subject at all unless one can be positive and definite about it? Why not leave the eldership question alone and put the time we have to better use?' That is a reasonable question. Let me try to answer it.The Christian Ministry In QuestionThere are factors in the current situation which make our subject compelling. We cannot keep putting it off.1. We who gather here are all deeply concerned for the continuance and the strengthening of the Christian ministry. We believe that in the structure of the church the office of the preacher is of vital importance and our prayer for the future is that God will raise up and appoint many men to that office.Our attitude in this regard goes back a long way. Calvin, for instance, says of gospel ministers: 'Whoever, therefore, either trying to abolish this order of which we speak and this kind of government, or discounts it as not necessary, is striving for the undoing or rather the ruin and destruction of the church'. (4)I need hardly remind you that today the trad... Read more

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