Most people look forward to the holidays and the attendant family celebrations and traditions. But during the holidays, those who have lost loved ones will be even more potently reminded of their pain and grief. Nancy Guthrie, cohost of GriefShare: Surviving the Holidays, discusses ways for pastors not only to help grieving people make it through this difficult season, but to … [Read more...]
Encouraging people to open up after trauma
The word trauma means “wound,” so a trauma is a wound to the mind, the heart, and the soul. Sometimes it’s a wound to the body as well. But it is a wound to the whole person, and it happens when suffering overwhelms what we would consider normal human coping. We all deal with stress in our lives, and we have ways of managing that, but trauma goes beyond that. It would … [Read more...]
How to care for church members shaken by a pastoral scandal
We recently interviewed Phil Sasser, pastor and elder at Sovereign Grace Church in Apex, NC. Phil shared with us his views on church polity, specifically the need for establishing clear organization in the face of difficult situations like the removal of a pastor as a result of a scandal or other type of misconduct. While some of Phil’s responses are reflective of his … [Read more...]
Helping victims of domestic abuse
To understand domestic abuse properly, let’s start with the word abuse, which comes from the Latin word abutor, meaning “to use wrongly.” It also means “to insult, violate, tarnish, or walk on.” So domestic abuse, then, occurs when one partner in the home uses the other partner for wrong purposes. Anytime a human being uses another as a punching bag, a depository for rage, or … [Read more...]
Helping those who are angry with God
Let’s begin with a case study. Todd, a middle-aged divorced man, says he is angry with God because, essentially, his life is falling apart. His wife left him for another man; his only child—a twenty-five-year-old son—is not very responsive to him anymore, and a stray dog recently killed his cat, which he thought was the only creature that seemed to love him. His life has not … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- …
- 51
- Next Page »