a word from the pastor

Is Your Child Prepared for College?

As a Christian dad, grandfather, and pastor, a major concern of mine is that our adversary, the devil, continues his relentless assault on the family. One of his battlegrounds is higher education, and surely he would like nothing more to disrupt the counsel of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in ...
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Don’t Just Say No

One of the more challenging aspects of parenting is navigating the stages of childhood development. It is often difficult to know how much freedom, knowledge, and discipline to give them as they grow older. Start with concrete rules and choices Little children require more concrete rules an...
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Making the Most of Your Quarantine

My wife recently shared with me an article about some amazing things that people accomplished while in seclusion: • According to a Shakespeare historian and Columbia University professor James Shapiro, the Bard wrote three of his classics, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, in 1606, t...
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Building Character in Your Children

Every parent wants to raise children of good character that possess qualities that people admire: honesty, courage and perseverance, to name a few. If reputation is what people think about you, then character is what God knows you to be. Character is what a person is on the inside. When it co...
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Caring for Planet A because there is a Planet B

Henry David Thoreau died in 1862 but his transcendental worldview lives on today, as evidenced by the reportedly millions of young people that took to the streets this weekend for the “global climate strike.” One photo showed a young protester wearing a t-shirt that said: There is no planet B. ...
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The Collapsing Bridge of Adolescence

The U.S. has over 600,000 bridges, almost four in 10 of which are at least 50 years old. Moreover, about 9% of America’s bridges are considered “structurally deficient,” and on average there are about 188 million trips across a structurally deficient bridge each day. While this is concerning, the...
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Fathers as Financial Advisors

While Father’s Day brings extra attention and honor to dads, I think one of the best ways to win the respect of your kids is to be a financial role model and advisor. Jesus taught about finance more than heaven, hell, and prayer combined. About half of his parables concern the use of money. The A...
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Great books = Great minds

When Henry David Thoreau was leaving the city for his excursion to Walden Pond, someone asked him if he wanted a newspaper delivered to his cottage. “No thanks,” he said, “I’ve already seen a newspaper.” I think that is the mindset parents should have when it comes to the content their children ...
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Daddy’s Bible

Judith and I recently visited my mom who lives in a small retirement community in Florida. It has been three years since my dad passed away and it seems on each visit, I discover something about him I didn’t know before. While helping mom with a small project I went in search of a Philip’s Head s...
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A Wake-up Call for “Sharents”

Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner (CC) for England, has provided a wake-up call to the millions of parents who regularly share information about their children on social media, also known as “sharenting.” According to the CC report, “by time the average child is 13 years old, parents will ...
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