miscellany [ mis-uh-ley-nee], noun
1. a miscellaneous collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items
2. a miscellaneous collection of literary compositions or pieces by several authors, dealing with various topics, assembled in a volume or book

Igniting Holy Fire: Lessons from the Ancient Church. "For some time, church growth was predicated on the notion of making the church feel welcoming and comfortable. Contemporary music, good coffee, a casual atmosphere, a great children’s program, and the absence of 'religious' rituals brought people in the door. Once they were in, so this line of thinking went, they could hear the message of the Gospel, get to know other Christians, join a small group, and thereby grow in the knowledge and love of God. The problem was, while the crowds were large, large numbers didn’t necessarily translate into individual personal growth in Christ. The Willow Creek Reveal study, for example, indicated a disconnect between attendance and transformation. As it turns out, making church as comfortable and easy as possible isn’t the best way forward. Rather, it makes the church simply one more consumeristic commodity."David Watson (now GMC) makes his plea for our congregations to follow the ancient paths instead of continuing to decline as we seek after the vanity and 'relevance' of the world.

Do Protestants Believe in Present-Day Miracles? "I think it would be accurate to say that in evangelical churches today there is less emphasis on the present-day 'miraculous' than there was in the Baptist churches my brother and I were raised in during the 1950s, even as Pentecostalism and related movements have grown enormously." As one raised and educated in a tradition where charismatic gifts were understood to have ceased at the close of the age of the Apostles, I've always been fascinated and a bit creeped out by the excesses of hyper-Pentecostalism. While many of us are cautious about such things, I wonder how often our healthy skepticism against these excesses turns (practically) into doubt and disbelief? Woe to us if our caution against one extreme puts us into the opposite ditch.

Now is the Time: Live Differently from the World. "To all of those who thought we could scrape by without much fuss—continuing to live quietly in the midst of the world, living our Christian faith without any conflict or much attention—that time has passed. In the face of the destruction of the family and a myriad of other pressures, even as trite as making copies, we have to live differently from the world. And we have to begin by making simple changes to our own life, to break out of worldly habits, to stop going along with the culture, to stop making excuses." This article is a wonderful motivation to live as true Christians in a culture that is entirely opposed to us and everything we believe!