Kyle Oliphint Dot Com

It is not a stretch to say that, humanly speaking, I am a minister because I faced early on my utter inability to pastor people. I failed in a lot of ways as a Young Life staff person and a youth director in a new PCA church. I still do after being an ordained minister for 16 years. But a primary failure in those early days was my inability (and often unwillingness!) to listen well. I've been reading through the book The Pastor and Counseling  by Jeremy Pierre and Deepak Reju. They have reminded me how the first task of pastoral ministry and pastoral counseling is humility which leads to listening well. Listening means to be fully engaged with the person or people in front of me. Being fully engaged means I am taking in their words, seeking to understand how they see their world. This is intentional activity on my part as I must seek to hear the parts others play in their life; family, friends and most especially God. I can get a sense of this by what they say and what they

I want to commend three excellent resources to you that address the current culturally hot topic of homosexuality. They are, in alphabetical order by title, Compassion without Compromise , Is God Anti-Gay and What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? .  I read them recently and am commending them to you now for one primary reason; keeping directly in front of us the people who struggle with same sex attraction and the Person who addresses this struggle. With all of the noise in our culture regarding homosexuals, the definition of marriage, the rule of law, the spheres of church and state and their relationship, I'm hearing lots of doom-saying, pessimism, squishiness and all out calls to retreat. As a minister and a Christian I needed help sorting through it all. These four authors ( Compassion without Compromise was written by two men) have provided me that help in valuable ways. This is not a review of any of the books. There are those who are much better at boo

Grief Undone: A Journey with God and Cancer by Elizabeth W. D. Groves My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is absolutely wonderful! Libby Groves shares her heart as she shares her grief and, most incredibly, the Lord's sustaining grace throughout it all. Pick it up and read it. View all my reviews