Repeat after me: “My non-Christian friends are not projects.” Too often, the good Christian desire to be evangelistic can make friendships with non-Christians awkward. We should want to be evangelistic, and it is right to care about the souls of our non-Christian friends. But our non-Christian friends shouldn’t feel like we are their friends just to convert them. Continue Reading →
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When we think about partiality, our minds may go back to our middle school days and “the cool kids” everyone was willing to please. We remember all the advantages that came to them for being the socially elite. While that is a valid example, if it’s our primary reference for applying this passage, we will likely miss James’ primary point. Continue Reading →
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This week’s mini-series on the Grace and Truth blog addresses group counseling. In this first article, Brad Hambrick describes the three life cycles of group-based counseling. In other contributions to the series, Ellen Dykas explains how facilitators can guard the group dynamic while at the same time caring for the individual members, and Nate and Kate Brooks share about their experience with the chronic pain and illness counseling group started by Kate. Continue Reading →
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In the biblical counseling movement, we have been prone to think of counseling as “every helpful conversation,” or as in the subtitle of one of our most popular books puts it, “People in need of change helping people in need of change.” In this mindset, we all do counseling every day as we listen to a friend, seek to understand, and offer hope or direction. Continue Reading →
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Parents want to protect their children’s innocence. This is right and good. The ever-younger age at which culture presses us to have conversations about sex, sexuality, and gender identity is discouraging. Sometimes it even feels like we’re being forced to contribute to something unhealthy for our children in order to prepare them for the questions and choices that will invariably come their way. However, we don’t need to be that pessimistic. But let’s be honest; there’s no guilt like parent guilt and no fear like parent fear. If we’re not honest about our fears, they will seep into the conversations we have with our children and make them less helpful—maybe even unhelpful. Continue Reading →
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