Check out

Why Satan Hates Your Family
This explains a lot.

Comforting a Grieving Family
It’s amazing how such simple steps can be such a great blessing.

How the Gospel brings us all the way home
Ligonier are offering Derek Thomas’s epic series on Romans 8 as a free eBook.

Get Ready for the Most Super Ordinary Sunday Ever
Phew! It’s always a relief to find someone else who has “ordinary” Sundays in their church.

Free Comprehensive Gospel-Centered Pre-Marital Mentoring Program
Brad Hambrick wants to “provide everything you need to provide every engaged couple in your church with a mentor couple who can walk them through a comprehensive pre-marital program. We also want to see the experienced marriages in your church enriched as they invest in engaged couples who are just beginning their marital journey.”

8-Year-Old Pays It Forward in Honor of Fallen Father
The last photo in this film is absolutely heart-crushing.


10 Teaching Tips from Derek Thomas

Yesterday the adult Sunday School at Grand Rapids Free Reformed Church started Derek Thomas’s new Ligonier video teaching series on Pilgrim’s Progress. Since I started pastoring there in July, we’ve worked our way through The Peacemaker by Ken Sande and Resisting Gossip by Matthew Mitchell – both great books for laying a foundation of biblical conduct in areas that often cause so many problems in churches. However, we fancied a change from a book study and also wanted to move on to something a bit more positive and encouraging than trouble-shooting and  problem-solving.

When I saw the Pilgrim’s Progress series, I knew immediately it would fit the bill. The video lessons are 20-25 minutes long and come with an excellent lecture outline and study guide, which makes for a perfect 40-minute Sunday school class format. That it was taught by Derek Thomas was the icing on the cake. As we watched yesterday morning, I was reminded again of why I’ve increasingly thought that Derek is one of the master teachers of our generation. Here are ten “teaching tips” that I picked up from watching Derek teach:

1. Relax: A tense teacher makes for a tense classroom. But uptight and stressed is not Derek’s style. He’s so laid-back and relaxed you feel he’s chatting to you round the fire more than lecturing in a classroom. He is so easy, enjoyable, and, yes, even entertaining to listen to.

2. Warm up: Unlike many American speakers who spring off the starting blocks like Usain Bolt, British speakers often take a while to get going. Derek takes even longer than most. Of course he could go faster, but he chooses to go more slowly at first in order to warm up his hearers and bring them along with him. He doesn’t want to give his hearers brain cramp.

3. Slow down: Derek doesn’t just start slow, he stays slow. Yes, his pace picks up as he goes on, but he never gets into motormouth territory. He makes the deliberate choice to cut down the number of words he will say in order to make the words he does say linger and stick. In a day that values quantity over quality, that takes great faith! Sinclair Ferguson and R.C. Sproul are also good examples of this.

4. Connect: Derek communicates affection and even love for his students. You get the clear impression that he actually likes the people he is teaching. They are not just automatons or statistics to him, but real people. You see this in his expressions and you hear it in his voice, but he also makes a couple of remarks to indicate that he’s observed who’s in front of him and that he’s tailoring his teaching to them.

5. Mix it up: He reads the book, expounds the book, critiques the book, explains the historical context, tells Bunyan’s life-story, asks questions, teaches theological principles, applies lessons to current times, and so on, seamlessly moving from one teaching tactic to another.

6. Tease: In a couple of places he hints at what lies in store down the road. By whetting the tastebuds and heightening anticipation he’s persuading people that their sacrifice of time will be worth it and that their perseverance in the course will pay off.

7. Lighten up: The lectern is not the same as the pulpit, and teaching from Pilgrim’s Progress is not the same as preaching God’s Word. Therefore the little sides and dashes of subtle humor are appropriate and even enhancing. Vitally, the humor never veers into the amateur stand-up comedy routine that has become so common and so tiresome.

8. Motivate: Derek raises the stakes right at the beginning of the lecture by explaining the historical importance of the Pilgrim’s Progress and by highlighting the danger of this present generation losing the book altogether. He is essentially calling his students to be “keepers of the flame,” to keep this important book alive in their homes and churches for years to come. Quite a calling!

9. Enthusiasm: I remember one teacher I had who clearly hated his job. One day he came into class, threw his jacket off, pulled his tie down, exhaled a sigh and groaned, “As I was driving in this morning, I was thinking, ‘Only 28 years of this to go!’” Inspiring! Not. Derek is such a contrast to this. His evident love for Bunyan and Pilgrim’s Progress is contagious and compelling.

10. Eye-contact: Few things bug me more than teachers who just stand at the front of a class, eyes down, reading notes word for word. Just give me the notes if you’re going to do that. I can read them better and faster than you. But though Derek is following notes, he’s not bound to them, maximizing eye-contact as much as possible throughout. It’s lively, “human,” and engaging.

I could go on, but you can watch the first lesson below and learn not just from what Derek teaches but also from how he teaches.


Check out

31 Days of Purity
Hoping and praying that this will bless many of us guys. Here’s Day 2.

The Absolute Best Mac Apps for Pastors
Next stop the App store.

The Death of the Bachelor’s Degree
Be sure to check out the comparison with the Associate’s degree at the foot of the infographic.

12 Things TEDx Speakers do That Preachers Don’t
Some of these don’t cross over but many do. I’ve always wanted to see a Christian conference arranged along the lines of the TED talks.

Loneliness and our Social Brain
Some fascinating research from a fascinating book.

Is Tim Keller Weak on Wrath?
A remarkable piece of research from Tony Reinke.

Why Did Harvard and the YMCA Stray From Their Christian Roots?
If you can put up with the Christian Post’s diabolical website, this is worth reading.


Children’s Bible Reading Plan

Here’s this week’s morning and evening reading plan in Word and pdf.

This week’s single reading plan for morning or evening in Word and pdf.

If you want to start at the beginning, this is the first year of the children’s Morning and Evening Bible reading plan in Word and pdf. And this is the second year in Word and pdf.

The first 12 months of the Morning or Evening Bible reading plan in Word and pdf.

Here’s an explanation of the plan.

And here are the daily Bible Studies gathered into individual Bible books with Genesis and Matthew now complete (explanatory note).

Old Testament

New Testament


The Happiness of the Christian Family

We have but one weapon left in our battle against gay marriage.

The happy Christian family.

We’ve lost the media, we’ve lost the polls, we’ve lost the courts, we’ve lost the major parties,  we’ve lost most politicians, we’ve lost the universities and colleges, we’ve lost the military, we’ve lost the workplace, and we’ve even lost many churches.

But we’ve not lost our families.

And the happy Christian family is potentially our greatest asset.

If there’s one thing that people are persuaded by, it’s happiness.

Our society has no idea how this terrible experiment with marriage and the family is going to play out in the coming years. No one can know the long-term consequences, especially for children. No supporter of gay marriage can predict the eventual impact of this massive cultural and societal revolution. It’s a fearful leap into the unknown that will result in unfathomable damage to innumerable multitudes of children (and adults). Our social services, our schools, our healthcare providers, and our criminal justice system are going to be picking up the tab for decades to come.

Incalculable Cost
If we thought the price tag of the 1960′s heterosexual revolution was high, get your biggest calculator out because the physical, emotional, societal, and psychological cost of this is going to be stratospheric and catastrophic.

And here’s where our opportunity lies.

Starting now, let all Christian parents double and triple their efforts to build Christian marriages and Christian families on the Word of God. Let’s demonstrate the superiority of God’s way. Lets prayerfully dedicate ourselves to loving one another as never before. Let’s call our children to be missionaries and witness for the power of Christian parenting. In private and in public let’s show how God’s way is the happiest and the healthiest way. If we’ve been bad examples and bad commercials for Christian marriage and parenting, let’s repent, seek God’s grace, and re-commit to God and to one another. Let’s show the world how happy our marriages are, and how happy the Christian family is – even through life’s ups and downs.

Two Models
Make no mistake, there are going to be two “models” of the family fighting it out in the coming years: the Christian model and the “everything else” model – homosexual, polygamous, polyamorous (don’t ask), and who knows what else.

Yes, we can and must protest and critique all these perversions of God’s order, but above all we’ve got to live out God’s order in as compelling and beautiful and persuasive a way as possible.

It’s going to take time. And there will be suffering along the way. Some of us are going to lose our jobs, our money, and even our liberty. But that’s just going to provide an even greater stage and shine an even brighter spotlight on Christian families to show the power of the Gospel in the family order that God has wisely designed and provided for humanity.

Anecdotes and Statistics
Initially all we’ll have are impressions and anecdotes, as people see, observe, and draw their own inevitable conclusions when they compare how the two models are working out. But eventually we will have statistics on our side as well, as sociologists begin to compile the facts and figures from our schools, our hospitals, our mental health institutions, our businesses, our social services, and so on. Eventually the case will be a slam dunk and there will be a frantic search for the rewind button.

Obviously this is all predicated on the assumption that God will continue to spare us, and not deal with us as He dealt with Sodom, while this awful experiment is played out. Abraham’s prayer gives me great hope in that regard (Genesis 18:22-33).

In the meantime, let’s make the happiness of our families our greatest aim in life and make it clear to all the world not just what we are AGAINST, but also what we are FOR, and to do so in a way that will persuade more effectively than any amount of blog posts.


Check out

Scargoyle Attacks the Family
Read on Saturday night to prepare for Sunday morning.

The “Well maybe…” of Redemptive History
A captivating piece by Jason Helopoulos that offers a unique summary of the Old Testament.

Professors, We Need You
Well, I would link to that wouldn’t I! But seriously, Patrick Schreiner has a good summery here of Nicholas Kristof’s NYT OP-Ed about the need for professors to start communicating better with the general public. I especially liked Tim Iglesias’s comment at the end about writing everything for three audiences. I’d like to propose a new rule for Christian publishing that every author who writes a book over 400 pages, must also write a cut down version of say 100 pages maximum.

7 Helpful and Overlooked Books on Preaching
I don’t know all of these but Carrick’s book changed my entire ministry.

Pastors and Mental Health
Very thankful to Thom Rainer for raising this and for offering pastors not just words but practical help.

No Roads? There’s A Drone for That
Andreas Raptopoulos, founder and CEO of Matternet, wants to use unmanned aerial drones to deliver supplies to areas without adequate road networks. By taking to the skies, he wants to “leap frog” past older modes of transportation towards the future.