Doug Patch

"Effective!" Is that how you would describe your meetings? Do you even have leaders' meetings or believe they are a waste of time? It is difficult to imagine how a leader can effectively communicate to the home church – verbally and by modeling – excitement and direction for evangelism and discipleship without healthy leaders meetings that evaluate the success and direction of the group. Here is a brief guide on how leaders' meetings can help a home church "stay the course."

Dennis McCallum

The need for effective small-group ministry is implied in the New Testament. If the local church is to develop the spiritual gifts of its members, mobilize the terrific power of the Holy Spirit to work through a trained and experienced laity, and facilitate true relationship-based community, it will need to organize smaller groups. Dwell Community Church, an independent fellowship in Columbus, Ohio, has centered around lay-led home church ministry since beginning in 1970. Using this focus, Dwell has grown from a handful to roughly 5,000 today. Home churches have also resulted in good morale among the hundreds of lay leaders, all graduates of a two-year graded training course.

Conrad Hilario

A personal crisis nearly led Peter Scazzero to resign as lead pastor of the church he and his wife Geri started. His journey of restoration inspired him to write Emotionally Healthy Discipleship (EHD). For anyone who has been leading for some time, Scazzero’s story resonates. His commitment and all-out drive for growth and ministry success eventually led to burnout.

Jim Leffel

How should we treat fellow human beings? Then there are legal questions about what should be prohibited or sanctioned in human genetic research. But a more basic and all too often ignored question must also be explored: What is a human person? Indeed, without an answer to this question, moral and legal reflection is almost pointless. How, for example, can we speak of protecting human rights without identifying the bearer of those rights? Recognizing human rights has always been an explosive business. In the 19th century, the issue was to whom do the constitutionally protected "inalienable rights of men" apply? This question so divided our republic that it was resolved only by civil war. In recent historic experience, we can turn to the death camps of Auschwitz or one of the thousands of "family planning centers" in America for further evidence of the scale of this question's lethality - and, tragically, of social ambivalence to it.

Dennis McCallum and Gary DeLashmutt

Critics of the Bible have drawn attention to various seemingly cruel or immoral rules or events in the Pentateuch. The following principles should be kept in mind when assessing such problems.

Gary DeLashmutt and Dennis McCallum

The ethical rules stated in the Bible are all applicable today, because the God who gave them does not change. It is our responsibility to bring into expression as many of the biblical rules as possible, even if this requires restructuring society to do so.

Dennis McCallum

We should consider a number of special factors when our leadership is taking people from an established way of doing things to a new way.