This month in our pastoral letters, we’re thinking about the rhythms of rest and work that God has built into His created order.   This week, I want to discuss one of our Lord’s sweetest gifts to His people: the rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest.  The day of rest is known in Hebrew as the Shabbat, meaning “ceasing or stopping,” from which we get our word “Sabbath.”  Because of the Jud...  Read More

Several years ago, I was out in the boat and dropped anchor to fish. We fished happily, not knowing that our anchor had not caught but instead was dragging along the mud beneath us. Next thing I knew, we had drifted into an oyster rake. Drifting is dangerous, and yet so often we can drift in our walk with the Lord without noticing it. Slowly, we spend less time in prayer or in the Word. What we on...  Read More

This month, we are studying the ways that God has designed us to glorify Him both in our rest and our work.  As we saw in last week’s letter, God has designed the world with built-in rhythms for both:  He has designed the day for activity and the night for sleep.  He has designed seasons for harvesting and seasons for reaping.  He has designed six days for working and one for rest.  He even gives ...  Read More

Dear Saints, I hope that reading these pastoral letters have been as much of an encouragement to you as writing them has been for me.  I don’t know if you have experienced this before, but I believe that the teacher often gets more from the lesson than the students.  That was certainly the case with this series on the “one anothers” of Scripture, as the Spirit moved powerfully in my own heart, con...  Read More

We have been using these pastoral letters over the last two months to examine many of the different “one another” passages in the New Testament. I hope it has been an encouragement to you; it has certainly encouraged me as I have watched you live out these commands from God in the life of our church. As we conclude this topic with this pastoral letter, I want to return to a quote I shared in the f...  Read More

Each month I send a list of books that I hope will be of encouragement to you.  Because I know we have people with various interests, I send many different categories of books.  Don’t be overwhelmed by the list- I’m giving you a broad selection in hopes that you’ll pick one or two books to read this month. My Main Read for March: While most of these books fit fairly neatly into categories, Michael...  Read More

This week in our pastoral letter, we’re going to think about a topic that is vital for life in the church: hospitality.  We will look at several New Testament exhortations to hospitality in this letter, but I want to focus on 1 Peter 4:9: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”Life in the early church to whom Peter wrote these words was exceedingly difficult.  Internally,  there were ...  Read More

This is our sixth installment in this series on the “one another” statements in Scripture.  Thus far, our focus has been on how we are to treat one another, particularly in times of conflict or controversy that could harm the church.  This week, I’d like for us to look at how we are called to intentionally and proactively build one another up in Jesus Christ.  I have been a believer for 24 years, ...  Read More

Why do you and I not live with such a constant and overwhelming sense of the lavishness of God’s grace towards us daily? It is not because He has been stingy, but because we, like the prodigal, seek blessedness outside of our Father’s house. To attempt to satisfy our hearts with earthly things is like eating from the bottom of the pigsty when a twelve course meal awaits us in our Father’s house.  Read More

This Lord’s Day, we will have the great privilege of receiving a precious covenant child into the body of Christ through the sign of baptism. There are some in our congregation who have not been exposed to infant baptism in the past and may have questions about what we mean when we baptize a baby. My hope is that this letter will help clarify what we believe infant baptism to be in contrast with w...  Read More

This week, I received a very sweet email from a young lady in our congregation who said something that absolutely overwhelmed me with joy. Speaking of the family at First Scots, she said, “the way y’all treat the people in that building is probably one of the most heaven-like things I’ve ever seen.” She’s right: in the divisive, selfish world in which we live, a church that treats one another well...  Read More

The phrase “one another” is frequently used in the New Testament to govern how we as believers are to treat one another within the context of the church. God emphasizes this because, after loving God with our whole hearts, love for one another is the most important evidence of true spiritual vitality (Matthew 22:38-39).In the following, I have categorized 52 “one another” passages from the New Tes...  Read More