Frederica Mathewes-Green is an author, columnist, and commentator, who serves on a range of advisory and editorial boards. She can be heard on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”

  The November 24, 1827, Report from the [U.S.] Office of Indians Affairs included a table of government expenditures for Native-American schools, including $400 for Wyandots in Ohio and $150 for Quaddy in Maine.1 The recipients of these funds were, respectively, the Methodist Society and the Society for Propagating the Gospel.

  John Venn was unflagging in his efforts to lead his people, the Clapham Church, to engage their own culture for the glory of Christ. As one of his biographers puts it, “It was Venn’s constant endeavor to lead his people into an experience of holiness which affected both their relationship with God and their relationship with their fellow men.”1

Mr. Andrew Harned Scripture Reference: Philippians 3:2-14

 Lisa Guinness is Director of the Living Waters Discipleship & Healing Trust within the United Kingdom and is a well-known speaker and author. Living Waters is an international ministry that provides an in-depth, Christ-centered program for people seeking healing in areas of sexual and relational brokenness.

  10:4 A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. 14:23 In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Proverbs 10:4; 14:23 (ESV)

  In the early 1980s, Ellie Hein had a disturbing dream, wherein she found herself on the bank of a great river, beside which soldiers were fighting. As the water turned red with blood, she spotted a host of terrified, emaciated women and children on the far bank, crying for help. Upon awakening, she knew that she had to do something to help them.1 Her husband, Rodney, came to the same conclusion, so this white, Zimbabwean couple began planning a relief mission into neighboring Mozambique, where anti-Marxist rebels2 were locked in civil war with the government.3

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Isaiah 16:1-14

  February 21, 1781,1 was declared a day of fasting across England, and John Newton preached this sermon, The Guilt and Danger of Such a Nation as This, from the text of Jeremiah 5:29. (Shall I not punish them for these things? declares the Lord; and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this? ESV). Fearing the judgment of God, Newton warned his hearers to repent before it was too late. His definition of national sins is pertinent for any day including the present. The former slave trader who after trusting Christ became a prominent advocate of the […]

From a Birmingham jail in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. penned his now famous response to the liberal clergymen who opposed his methods for fighting racial discrimination.1 Among his many disappointments, one stood out above all others. In the face of manifest ungodliness, the Church had been silent. King was painfully aware that when the Church is silent about sin, evil will follow. As a minister of the gospel, he was equally convinced that the Church could speak prophetically to the culture and transform it. But unless her voice was faithful and clear, she would become irrelevant. He was right.