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Church Life

Hospitality: A New Testament Value and Duty

By Christian Living, Church Life, Family Discipleship

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer…Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. Acts 2:42, 46, 47 Practice hospitality. Romans 12:13 Now the overseer must be…hospitable. 1 Timothy 3:2 There is something mystically bonding when true hospitality occurs. The more a church becomes building oriented, the more this spiritual activity will atrophy. In a healthy church, hospitality and table fellowship are occurring in families and across families. There is nothing…

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How Children’s Directors and Teachers Can Help Parents

By Church Life, Family Discipleship, Parenting: Childhood, Parenting: Early Years, Parenting: Teens and Beyond

What can I do as a children’s director or teacher to help parents disciple their children? I have been asked this question or a variation of it many times. A children’s director or children’s teacher loves working with kids. However, he or she knows the biggest influence happens in the home. So even as he or she is working with the children, there is a longing to help parents. Often he or she is worried about the influences in the home but doesn’t know what to do. There are a number of obstacles that children’s ministers have. Sometimes it is the…

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Guy Wilcox – How to Use The Disciple-Making Parent to Equip Parents in Your Church

By Church Life, Family Discipleship, Leadership, Parenting: Childhood, Parenting: Early Years, Parenting: Teens and Beyond, Podcast
You're a person who loves the material that The Disciple-Making Parent produces, but how do you help others catch the vision? What can you do to help others pass the gospel to their children and keep them from becoming spiritual casualties? In today’s episode, Guy Wilcox, a youth pastor out of Fayetteville, Arkansas, gets very specific about how he used the book, The Disciple-Making Parent to equip the parents in his large church. ----- We want to help you raise strong disciples of Jesus Christ, who can stand strong in today's culture, and you can get the audiobook of the...
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Should I Make My Teen Go to Church?

By Church Life, Family Discipleship, Parenting: Teens and Beyond
I have been asked this question four times in the past four months. Though there are variations, the basic question is, "Should I make my teenager go to church if he or she doesn't want to?" One parent thinks of a 16-year-old son who says, "I am not a Christian and don’t enjoy church; why do I have to go?" Others were thinking of a similar scenario. One added the twist of having a 19 or 20-year-old still living at home and negatively influencing the younger siblings. The following are some wisdom principles that would lead me to conclude that...
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Pastor All the Sheep

By Christian Living, Church Life, Family Discipleship

I recently was asked to give a very short talk to pastors about the pastor’s family. I wrote about the subject several years ago here: How Churches Can Care for Their Pastor’s Children How Pastors Can Care for Their Children *The following are my rough notes from my most recent talk.* dHaving pastored for over 30 years and raised my children as a pastor, what advice would I give that is unique to a pastor? Here are three specific thoughts. 1. Pastor all the sheep. When you study the life of Jesus you see that there was a priority in discipleship: the crowds, the 70,…

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Tim Challies – Walking Through Deep Sorrow and Loss

By Christian Living, Church Life, Family Discipleship, Parenting: Childhood, Parenting: Early Years, Parenting: Teens and Beyond, Podcast
It's every parent's nightmare. An unexpected phone call, an unexpected funeral burying your own child. How do we react in the days and months and years ahead? On November 3rd, 2020, Tim Challies received just such a call. He received the shocking news that his son Nick had died. During those days, months, and year of loss, Tim began to write. And the content of that writing is what we're going to talk about in this episode. We're going to talk about his most recent book, Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God. Play Video...
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How You Can Use The Disciple-Making Parent in Your Church – An Interview with Guy Wilcox

By Church Life, Family Discipleship, Parenting: Childhood, Parenting: Early Years, Parenting: Teens and Beyond

Recently, I sat down with Guy Wilcox to discuss how they seek to equip their parents to disciple their children. Guy serves at University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, AR, working with both students and music ministry. I thought I would share how he uses The Disciple-Making Parent in his context and might be an encouragement to get something like this started in your church context. At UBC, he takes men and women through 10-week studies on parenting. You can see the details below. Chap: Why did you choose The Disciple-Making Parent? Guy: It covers a lot of different parenting topics…

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Ray Van Neste – Reasons a Preacher Should Address the Children

By Church Life, Discerning Culture, Family Discipleship, Parenting: Childhood, Parenting: Early Years, Parenting: Teens and Beyond, Podcast

Could it be that we’re ignoring a large group in our worship service, even when they show up week after week? I planted and pastor to church for 25 years, and I know that everyone has a wonderful idea about what you should be doing with your time. But I would ask you to think about one little section of your sermon. That’s what we’re gonna be talking about in today’s podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Ray Van Neste about his recent blog post entitled: Preacher, Don’t Forget to Speak to the Children. And in that post, he lays out…

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Deepak Reju -Establishing an Effective and Safe Children’s Ministry

By Church Life, Discerning Culture, Family Discipleship, Parenting: Childhood, Parenting: Early Years, Parenting: Teens and Beyond, Podcast

This Sunday, hundreds of thousands of parents will drop off their children at the children’s ministry of a church. And hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours will have been spent in preparation, but is the ministry safe? And is it effective? We’re going to be talking with Deepak Reju about two of his very helpful books. In the first part of the interview, we will talk about the, his book Build on Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide for Gospel Based Children’s Ministry. In the second half of our conversation, we talk about a second book On Guard: Preventing and Responding to…

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Why Should You Have a Family Ministry Strategy?

By Christian Living, Church Life, Family Discipleship, Leadership

I believe every church and leadership team should have a conscious family discipleship strategy. How are we as a church planning to build up the family? Below are six reasons to have a family ministry strategy. Reason #1 Because Leadership Training Begins in the Home Church after church decries their lack of spiritual leaders. Who wouldn’t gladly receive numerous individuals who will shepherd others for their spiritual good? When Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion, he prayed for spiritual workers. But how will those spiritual leaders be trained? To begin with, they learn how to shepherd in their homes….

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