By Karl Vaters Church attendance should be a tool to help people draw closer to Jesus. Not the other way around. I have a confession to make. As a pastor, I have too much invested in getting people to attend church. My salary depends on it. My reputation depends on it. My sense of self-worth... Continue Reading →
Upper-level Vision
By Scott Armstrong What is your passion? What gets you out of bed even on the bad days? When I was a teen, I probably would have thought of such questions as irrelevant or even dumb. I was driven to get good grades, but I was probably just as passionate about eating ice cream or... Continue Reading →
Why Jesus Never Commanded us to Plant Churches – Part 2 of 2
This is part two of the article published in the previous post. Do our actions match our words? We say we want to see churches planted from out of the harvest, but our actions and our leadership practices do not often match our words. And the sad thing is that even when faced with such inconsistencies,... Continue Reading →
Why Jesus Never Commanded us to Plant Churches – Part 1 of 2
By J. D. Payne I recently spoke with a church-planting leader for a particular denomination. As we talked over coffee, he inquired about the direction of our church when it comes to church planting. My response was to describe our future missionary labors in terms like we read about in Acts 13-14; 16; 20; 1... Continue Reading →
Our Massive, Incomparable God
By Rev. Rob Prince We have no idea how big the Universe is. The farthest thing we have measured so far with the help of a mighty telescope—actually two telescopes: one in Hawaii and one in outer space—is 13 billion light years away (a light year, by the way, is 5.88 trillion miles). So the... Continue Reading →
Smoke Went Up
By Rev. Rob Prince Smoke went up when I said “Yes” to God’s call into full time ministry. It wasn’t a “white-smoke-out-of-the-chimney-like-when-they-elect-a-pope” kind of smoke; it was more like a “too-much-wet-wood-on-the-fire” kind of smoke. I was sitting beside a campfire on the Church of the Nazarene’s Eastern Michigan District Campgrounds at a teenage “afterglow” following... Continue Reading →
New Beginnings
By Scott Armstrong Need a new beginning in your life, in your city, or in your church? God specializes in helping us start afresh. God gives us fresh songs of praise. “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put... Continue Reading →
Heart of God: Parable of the Mustard Seed
By Howard Culbertson "Though [a mustard seed] is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” -- Matthew 13:32 Matthew 13 contains over half a dozen of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom. Jesus... Continue Reading →
Break My Heart, Lord
I received the following reflection from Rev. Howie Shute. Howie and his wife Bev served for many years in the Horn of Africa as missionaries with the Church of the Nazarene and were part of a truly amazing movement of God in those countries. Currently they serve as pastors of the Victory Hills Church of... Continue Reading →
5 Mistakes More Likely To Be Made By Small Churches Than Big Churches
By Karl Vaters Different sizes of churches serve different functions. And they face different challenges. Small churches are not just smaller versions of big churches. Every size has value, but different sizes serve different functions in the body of Christ. They also have different challenges and they tend to make different kinds of mistakes. Here... Continue Reading →