DURHAM, NC – For many people, the Bible can be an overwhelming and intimidating book. For pastors who stand and teach from the Bible every Sunday, the task can be daunting. How can one person work through all that material, and how can people finally get to a place where they feel comfortable reading the […]
This morning I recounted to my wife an occasion about twelve years ago when I was preaching from Luke 8:19-21 where the text says, “Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd.” After reading this text to the congregation, I looked up with a […]
Imagine, if you can, an ancient walled city. It is beautiful and expansive, surrounded on every side by lofty walls with gates to the north, south, east, and west. Imagine watchmen atop the walls, and sentries at the main gates with their entourage of guards to let citizens and well-meaning visitors in, and to keep […]
My wife, our son, and I all entered into full communion with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil Mass in 2019. At that Mass, each of us received the Eucharist for the first time as confirmed Catholics. Neither my son nor I had ever received the Eucharist in a Catholic Mass prior to that. […]
One of the Catholic ministries that has meant the most to me and my family on our journey into the fulness of the Christian Faith is the Coming Home Network launched by Marcus Grodi in the late 1990s. The Mission of CHN is “to help non-Catholic Christians, clergy, and laity, discover the truth and beauty […]
Assurance of Salvation is practically stock-in-trade with most evangelical Christians. “How can I know I’m really saved?” or “how can I be sure I’ll go to heaven when I die?” are questions many new Christians ask. A favorite verse for those who want to encourage people that they can know for sure that they have […]
I recently had an opportunity to join a new friend and fellow Catholic convert, K. Albert Little on his podcast called The Cordial Catholic. Our discussion centered on how the Holy Spirit called me (and my family) to do something we never thought we would ever do; enter into full communion with the Catholic Church! […]
One of the charges I often hear from my non-Catholic Christian friends is that I seem to be undermining the inspiration and sufficiency of Scripture in my constant critique of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Nothing could be further from the truth! To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The inspired books teach […]
Before I was a Catholic (and the entire 12 years I was the senior/teaching pastor at our congregation) I encouraged people to judge everything they believed and to judge what I was teaching them on Sundays, by the Bible — especially if there was a dispute between two contrary ideas that needed to be resolved […]
If the past three years of my life have been anything, they have been an almost daily exercise of frequently using the phrases “but the Catholic Church doesn’t teach that,” and “I wouldn’t have become Catholic if that is what the Catholic Church taught!” That’s because I have found that one has to constantly confront […]