Fighting our Enemies
Several years ago I missed a turn for one of my speaking events. It didn’t take me long to realize I was on the wrong road, but I didn’t know how to find my way without help. So I pulled…
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Gi Pung Yi – First Korean Martyr
Gi Pung Yi – First Korean Martyr He was the first Korean Protestant missionary and the first Korean martyr, often remembered as the father of the Korean Protestant church. It all began through a rock and a bout of hot…
Catherine Willoughby – An Outspoken Reformer
Catherine Willoughby – An Outspoken Reformer When fourteen-year-old Catherine Willoughby married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in 1533, she became one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in England. Thirty-five years her senior, Brandon had been married three…
Ursula von Münsterberg and Her Crisis of Conscience
The story of the flight of Katie von Bora from her convent and her arrival at Wittenberg, where she eventually married Martin Luther, is well-known. Few are acquainted with the person who engineered the flight, Ursula von Münsterberg, granddaughter of…
Church Discipline: Wisely and Lovingly Receive Righteous Rebukes
This Church Discipline series focused on guiding members in need of repentance by formal levels of rebuke. But the hopeful prayer of elders at each point of censure along the way is that it need never go further, especially not…
Church Discipline: What Does Suspension Mean?
There are times within a disciplinary process that some in the church must be temporarily postponed from their normal opportunity to take part in the formal fellowship or service of the saints. The status of those so suspended is not…
Church Discipline: What is Rebuke?
Reformed, confessional theologians often point out that discipline is one of three signs of a true church.[1] Highlighting this distinguishing mark, my seminary professor once rhetorically asked our class, “How many true churches are out there?” The Westminster Confession of…
Margaret Mure and the Love of Christ
Margaret Mure and the Love of Christ Today, James Durham is remembered as a faithful preacher, a moderate spirit at a time of great controversy, and an early advocate of the free offer of the gospel. But few…
Tiyo Soga – The First Ordained Black South African
Tiyo Soga – The First Ordained Black South African Many things had changed in South Africa since Tiyo Soga had first traveled to Scotland in 1846. And he had changed as well. He had left a young seventeen-year-old graduate…
Rebecca Protten and the First Black Protestant Church in the Americas
Rebecca Protten and the First Black Protestant Church in the Americas When seven-year-old Rebecca Protten was kidnapped from her family home in Antigua, she couldn’t possibly imagine that her new life in the island of St. Thomas, a…