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Free Study Guide for 12 Ways
Here’s a free study guide for 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. Great resource for youth (and not-so-youth) groups.

Top Reasons Why a Long Commute May Be Worth It
Three reasons to look forward to work even when you have a grueling commute.

A New Kind of Youth Ministry (to save the local church)
Not sure where this series is going but this initial article on he historical background to youth ministry is fascinating.

The Most Important Ingredient for Rebuke
“Be ready to say the hard thing, Timothy, and then do the harder thing and practice complete patience with fellow sinners.”

6 Surprises Every Premarital Counselor Should Cover
“Many young couples head into marriage with blinders—believing their marriage will be the fairy tale they dreamed of as they planned a Pinterest ceremony and momentous honeymoon. But the truth is marriage reveals our sin, exposes our desires, challenges our relational network, and requires us to regularly practice costly forgiveness. Engaged folk need to know that marriage is a call to ministry where two sinners learn—till death parts them—how to apply the gospel of grace.”

Leaders and Loneliness
I agree with this assessment. I’d only add that in the falls I’ve witnessed, the pastors and leaders chose isolation, resisting fellowship and accountability. It wasn’t people who pulled away from them; they pushed people away.

“In the past two years, five of my friends who are pastors lost their ministries because of moral failure. Five. Most of these pastors were also well known and celebrated beyond their local contexts. From the outside, it seemed they were at their peak pastorally and relationally. How could it be otherwise? Their books sold like hotcakes, they had speaking engagements galore, and their adoring congregations devoured their words like honey. Surrounded by such acclaim, the one thing they couldn’t possibly be… …is lonely. “

Mexico City Burnout
If American pastors think they’ve got it bad….

5 Tough Lessons from the Death of Nabeel
Why would God take away such a beloved and useful servant of Christ?

6 Actions to Take when Grieving the Death of a Loved One
Six things that, if done in faith, can be the way to resurrection.

Kindle Books

10 Things Every Minister’s Wife Needs To Know by Jeana Floyd $2.99.

Wait and See: Finding Peace in God’s Pauses and Plans by Wendy Pope $2.99.

The Dating Manifesto: A Drama-Free Plan for Pursuing Marriage with Purpose by Lisa Anderson $1.59.

When we look back on our childhoods, among many other happy memories, we may recall our parents reading with us. “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Three Little Pigs,” and multiple other children’s classics cast a warm hue upon our earliest recollections.

So why don’t we do the same with the Bible? Why don’t we read the Bible one-on-one with our children? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to give our children that best of memories? If you haven’t started such a practice, let me give you some guidance to start the ball rolling.

You can read the rest of this article at Crossway’s blog where I expand upon the following points

1. Give them a good reason to read the Bible.

2. Establish a routine.

3. Be realistic.

4. Be systematic

5. Ask good questions.

6. Ask God for help.

Speakers (and preachers) succeed if they are givers not takers, rapiers not ramblers, interesting not boring, and leave the inspiring to God.

Not all TED talks go viral. Some fall flat and into oblivion. In TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, Chris Anderson highlights four speaking styles that are guaranteed fails. Same warnings apply to preaching, writing, and blogging.

The Sales Pitch: There’s a big difference between sharing an idea and pitching a sale. The key principle is to remember that the speaker’s job is to give to the audience, not take from them.

The Ramble: If people have given up some of their precious time and attention to listen to you, you’d better use that time and attention as well as possible.

The Org Bore: An organization is fascinating to those who work for it— and deeply boring to almost everyone else.

The Inspiration Performance: Inspiration is like love. You don’t get it by pursuing it directly through using every trick in the book of intellectual and emotional manipulation. “Inspiration is an audience response to authenticity, courage, selfless work, and genuine wisdom.”

Speakers (and preachers) succeed if they are givers not takers, rapiers not ramblers, interesting not boring, and leave the inspiring to God.

More articles in the Preaching Lessons from TED Talks series.

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Dying Well
This is really what it’s all about, getting ready to die.

Pastors are called to equip the saints to walk in those good works that God has prepared beforehand for them to walk in. Every saint (except those alive when Jesus returns) will have to walk through the good work of dying well. May the Lord enable us to prepare Jesus’ sheep to live by faith and to die by faith.

A Letter to My Former Pastor, on the Occasion of His Retirement
Beautiful.

Bro. Ken, When I opened the email that said you planned to step down as senior pastor this year, I cried. The tears flowed both from sadness at the passing of time and from gratitude for you and your ministry. For more than a decade of my life, you were the primary chef who served up and seasoned the meat of God’s Word for my spiritual sustenance. During my most formative years, you nourished me through your preaching more than one thousand times.

The Real Story of Christianity and Abortion
Never give up. Never give in.

To the utter consternation of the abortion rights movement, the issue of abortion simply will not go away. Decades after abortion rights activists thought they had put the matter to rest with the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, America’s conscience is more troubled than ever, and near-panic appears to break out regularly among abortion activists. Such a panic is now under way, and the defenders of abortion are trotting out some of their most dishonest arguments. One of the worst is the claim that Christians have only recently become concerned about the sanctity of human life and the evil of abortion.

Seven Characteristics of Liberal Theology
Watch for even the smallest beginnings of these.

Setting the Tone in Your Home
Dadas too.

Mamas, you have been granted a special gift in the life of your family: you are the tone setter. It doesn’t matter if you have fancy decor or an immaculately clean house. It doesn’t matter if you work long hours or stay home all day long. When you are with your family, you guide the atmosphere.”

Parenting and Emotional Intelligence
“As you look back on your childhood, how did your family of origin approach feelings? How has that shaped you and the way you interact with others? If you are a parent, how does that play itself out in the way you interact with your children?”

Kindle Books

“Free Grace” Theology: 5 Ways It Diminishes the Gospel by Wayne Grudem $3.99. This is an important book on a vital subject.

Ready for Reformation? by Tom Nettles $0.99. If you’re not already over-Reformationed.

How to Be a Christian in a Brave New World by Joni Eareckson Tada $1.99.

Parents face huge obstacles in trying to get their kids excited about reading the Bible. For starters, very few kids are reading anything at all. There are so many distracting (and seemingly more exciting) alternatives to sitting quietly with a book. The pressure of school activities, sports, and the social whirl are not conducive to finding a quiet time to read.

On top of that, the Bible is not an easy read. Sure, there are some well-known sections that many kids are familiar with through Sunday school and VBS, but the vast majority of it is unchartered territory. It’s not a multimedia fest; it’s black words on white pages. It’s not a world that most kids are familiar with; the culture, history, and geography of the Bible seem a million miles and years away from modern children.

Two Enemies

And worst of all, we have two enemies fighting with all their might against children reading the Bible. There’s the devil, who opens the gates of hell whenever a child opens a Bible. And there are our children’s hearts, which are turned away from the truth from birth (Psalm 51:5; 58:3). No one naturally and normally delights in the Word of God without being given a new heart by regeneration.

Despite these discouraging impediments, I still believe we should and can encourage our children to see Bible reading as a delight rather than a drudge. And the most powerful way of doing that is by conveying our own delight in God’s Word. We have to demonstrate that the Bible lights up our life. If we’re not excited about this book, we can’t expect our children to be.

Read the rest of this article at Crossway’s blog.

Good speakers are focused on their speaking. Great speakers are focused on their audience’s hearing.

What makes the difference between a good speech and a great speech? They share many common qualities: important subject, accurate research, clear writing, organized material, relevant illustrations, passionate communication, and so on.

But they differ in one important area.

Good speakers are focused on their speaking. Great speakers are focused on their audience’s hearing.

If you were able to measure where a speaker’s primary concern lay, good speakers would have a big arrow pointing to their mouth. Great speakers would have a big arrow pointing at their hearers’ ears.

The good speaker’s primary question is “How can I get this out?” The great speaker’s main question is “How do I get this in?”

The good speaker is concerned with “How can I teach this?” The great speaker gravitates towards, “How can they learn this?”

The good speaker asks, “Is this the best structure and outline to help me deliver this message?” The great speaker asks, “Is this the best structure and outline to help my hearers embrace this message?”

The good speaker concentrates on delivering his manuscript. The great speaker concentrates on his hearers receiving his words

The difference is sometimes subtle and difficult to detect in the moment of speaking, but always vast in the long-term impact of the words.

In TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, Chris Anderson explains that the most successful TED talks not only have a compelling idea at their core, but the speakers have spent time thinking about the best way to get that idea out of their head and into the heads of others.

Most good speakers think it’s enough to have a good idea and to express it clearly. The best speakers go the extra mile; they put in the extra time and tears to figure out the best way to transfer the idea from their mind into others’ minds.  As Anderson puts it:

Language works its magic only to the extent that it is shared by speaker and listener. And there’s the key clue to how to achieve the miracle of re-creating your idea in someone else’s brain. You can only use the tools that your audience has access to. If you start only with your language, your concepts, your assumptions, your values, you will fail. So instead, start with theirs. It’s only from that common ground that they can begin to build your idea inside their minds.

I love that metaphor of re-creating our idea in our listeners’ minds. The good speaker uses the materials of his own mind to do this. The great speaker reaches into the minds of his hearers and uses the materials he finds there. Without this, idea-transference will never happen. With it, the possibilities are endless.

Is God not the best example of this? He didn’t communicate with his own concepts and words. That would have not only baffled our minds but exploded them. Instead he used the concepts and materials he found in our own minds. Indeed, in his ultimate communication, he used the materials of our own human flesh, our own human souls, and our own human minds. “The Word became flesh.” And all because he was focused on our hearing not his speaking.

Good speakers are focused on their speaking. Great speakers are focused on their audience’s hearing.

More articles in the Preaching Lessons from TED Talks series.