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Channel: Death and Dying – What God Wants for Your Life
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Nine Ways Your Pastor Can Help You Plan for a Funeral

In recent years churches have made a greater effort to prepare members of their congregations for death.  But much of that conversation is still squarely focused on advanced directives and clergy often...

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The Last Enemy

At my brother’s funeral just over three years ago, the pastor officiating at the service brought us together in the church’s library and laid down the law. “There isn’t going to be any grieving today....

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5 False Dichotomies that Disarm the Church in Times of Crisis

I had a student not long ago who attended a church whose pastor majored in sermons of political and social significance. One Sunday a woman in her late eighties, battling deteriorating health and...

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Three Ways to Navigate Anniversaries of Loss

  In a world of people that are regularly divided into “the glass is half empty” and “the glass is half full” kinds of people, I tend to be one of those people who is inclined to say, “Look, it’s 4...

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The Spiritual Logic of Easter

Resurrection, then hope. No Resurrection, then no hope. The spiritual logic of the New Testament is direct, unequivocal, and it is difficult to underestimate the significance of that logic for the...

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The Limits to Professional Boundaries

Over the years I’ve seen and read a number of articles about professional boundaries and their application to work in the church. Much of that literature is very helpful and stakes out areas where...

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Pray for Your Death

I have no trouble praying for the dying or the dead. With C.S. Lewis (among many others in the Christian tradition), I believe that eternal life is life lived in the presence of the Triune God. That...

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What can I do when others are suffering?

In caring for those who are in one of life’s difficult places, the most common question is, “What can I do?” The desire to “do” something is entirely understandable.  There are countless realities in...

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“Death is nothing at all”

I take comfort in the fact that my part of the Christian family prays for the dead and that we believe that the dead can pray for us.  We are not, as Flip Wilson put it, “the church of what’s happening...

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No Cause for Celebration: “Can I say life sucks?”

Introduction to the series  Almost ten years ago, my brother, Dave, battled a fatal brain cancer for nearly eight years and died in January of 2013, as the result of a fall that was due in large part...

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