By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on February 15, 2018
When I was 5, I remember asking Jesus into my heart with my Dad kneeling next to me leading me in the “Sinner’s Prayer”. When I was 8, my dad baptized me and prayed over me inviting the Holy Spirit to transform my life. When I was 16, I received a supernatural healing as my…
By: Kristin Hamilton on February 8, 2018
When I was 9 months pregnant and my daughter decided that 13 days was an appropriate amount of time to be late, every woman who had ever given birth decided to tell me how all of their kids had been right on time with hardly any trouble. Considering I’d already had two difficult pregnancies and…
By: Chip Stapleton on February 8, 2018
It’s Lonely at the Top….. but when life hands you lemons, try making lemonaide While most of us appreciate a little ‘alone time’, very few people would choose to be isolated from others, especially for any extended period of time. But just because we might not choose times of isolation (often called ‘wilderness’ or ‘desert’…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on February 8, 2018
I have found over the course of my short life that I have encountered moments in life that have caused me to decide to take a break or forced me into a place where I had no other options. In either of the ways in which I arrived at this place, the outcome has always…
By: Katy Drage Lines on February 8, 2018
Setting: Turkana, Kenya. It was late at night, the sky was clear & the Milky Way spanned from horizon to horizon. But I didn’t see it because I was crouched on the floor of our tiny kitchen, bawling. NW Kenya can be a quiet & isolated place, and that night I felt it more than…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on February 8, 2018
When my son was in middle school, his best friend moved away and he struggled to make new friends in a less than welcoming environment. It was heartbreaking to see his eyes well up with tears from the lunches and recesses he often spent alone, and I wished I could take this pain away. Yet,…
By: Lynda Gittens on February 8, 2018
just for the picture Author Shelley Trebesch’s book, Isolation, seeks to assist those in Leadership to understand the need to Pause and Refresh from their busy lives. In past times, one was always taught to work hard to succeed; the early bird catches the worm; you lose if you snooze; or while you…
By: Stu Cocanougher on February 8, 2018
Our church no longer has a printed church newsletter. Instead, we have an online newsletter on our website called “The Latest.” In that newsletter we talk about things that are happening in the church, highlight ministries, and sometimes we even have book reviews. Upon reading Isolation: A Place of Transformation in the Life of a…
By: Mary Walker on February 7, 2018
Isolation: A Place of Transformation in the Life of a Leader Building on the work of Dr. J. Robert Clinton, Shelley Trebesch explains a necessary part of leadership development – “isolation processing”. Dr. Trebesch gives the definition of isolation as “the setting aside of a leader from normal ministry involvement in its natural context usually…
By: Jim Sabella on February 7, 2018
The photo you see is the “real” Jim Sabella. I am one who gains their energy and refreshing in times of quiet isolation. That’s one reason why I prefer, for example, fly fishing in the Owyhee river over fly fishing the Delaware River. Both are beautiful in their own way. The Delaware rises from the Catskill Mountains…
By: Kristin Hamilton on February 1, 2018
“Many evangelicals themselves have little understanding of their own historical roots and little appreciation of the movement’s diversity across many cultures and nations.” – Lewis & Pierard[1] “History is but a fable agreed upon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte “For most of history, anonymous was a woman.” – Virginia Woolf I love history. In particular, I love…
By: Chip Stapleton on February 1, 2018
One of the most important and transformative experiences for me in my study to become a minister was (of all things) my seminary class on Church History. The class was so important and such a defining experience for me was because it was, intentionally, designed to be very different than the church history courses that…
By: Stu Cocanougher on February 1, 2018
This summer I will be leading a mission trip to East Asia. This team will consist of about 50 persons, mostly adults, but some children and teens will join their parents. We just purchased our airplane tickets for the trip today. Since there is a direct flight from DFW, our team will board a…
By: Lynda Gittens on February 1, 2018
In the late 70’s earlier 80’s, my church planted and sustained an orphanage in Haiti until the government coup took the orphanage from us. Around 2007, our church began to plant mission trips and partnership with other nonprofits located in South Africa but halted the impact of the mission visits because of the need to…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on February 1, 2018
“There is no doubt that the primary source material is at least partially responsible for the adoption of this more limited lens. Much of the material upon which we depend as historians is written from the male perspective and more often than not from the vantage point of the pulpit rather than the pew”[1] This…
By: Katy Drage Lines on February 1, 2018
As I read through these essays curated by Donald Lewis and Richard Pierard, I grappled with mixed feelings. Each of the ten essays approached the topic of evangelicalism in their context differently. In following the work of a dozen authors, I offer some reflections, though primarily focusing on the late Ogbu Kalu’s essay on Africa,…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on January 31, 2018
Evangelicalism is difficult to define since it has no permanent roots or central gathering place like the Catholic church with the pope in Rome. Additionally, there are many kinds of evangelicalism: Pentecostal, fundamental, charismatic… as well as the numerous denominations represented. Interestingly, “The word denomination was first used in English to describe those Christians who…
By: Mary Walker on January 31, 2018
Many evangelicals themselves have little understanding of their own historical roots and little appreciation of the movement’s diversity across many cultures and nations.[1] Global Evangelicalism is a fairly recent book that provides a general introduction to evangelicalism and a global survey of the topic. Dedicated to Dr. Ogbu U. Kalu (1942-2009) the book is…
By: Jim Sabella on January 30, 2018
Don’t we just love to define things—music, food, people, ideas? One of the more popular ways people begin a public speech is with the words, “Webster defines X as A, B, C and even sometimes Q, but never W or R. Let us begin with A.” And off they go. With a definition in hand,…
By: Chip Stapleton on January 26, 2018
In his insightful and engaging book, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx Dominic Erdozain takes a look at some of the great ‘doubters’ of history, the situations they arose from and the religious, philosophical and spiritual thoughts and movements they were responding to. As I was reading this week,…
