Kyle Oliphint Dot Com

Love/Hate Relationship I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I love it that it allows me to keep up with friends and family, provides forums for "quick-takes" and can be a great resource for deeper reading when links to books and journals are provided. I hate it when it becomes a platform for debate or is used to stir up controversy. The "hate" part of my relationship with social media has been alive and well over the course of the last few days following my denomination's annual meeting which is called our General Assembly. There is a lot of work that takes place during this week; good and necessary work for the good of the Presbyterian Church in America. But, inevitably, stuff will happen that can be controversial. Controversy is in the eye of the beholder, often times. For many of my friends and fellow elders in the PCA, one particular issue was worrisome. I'm Glad You Asked (but not really) We debated and eventually approved a st...

A recent situation at the public high school where my oldest two attend has been a topic of conversation in our home. A high school girl availed herself of the boy's bathroom. A fellow male student snapped a picture of her while she was in there and posted it on social media. Both the female student who entered the boy's bathroom and the male student who snapped the picture have been disciplined. The female is not allowed to enter the boy's bathroom, regardless of whether she identifies as a boy. And under no circumstances may anyone take pictures of others in a bathroom and post those pictures on social media. Cue the firestorm. Those who sympathize with the female student have begun to protest. She should, they argue, be able to enter the boy's bathroom if she identifies as a boy. Another group of students gathered around the flagpole during the protest to pray for the school and all involved. My high school daughter was registering her outrage and frustration...

The privilege of planting and pastoring the same church for 11 years brings with it some hard good-byes. Literally, from the first month, January 2005, people have come, joined and left. This is just part of church life. But, at the same time God has brought many new people in these 11 years, people committed to serve and worship at Grace Community Presbyterian Church, PCA.  We always rejoice when we receive new members. This too, by God's grace, has been a wonderful part of church life. We've lost valuable servants and members because their jobs have taken them out of Fort Worth. I don't like it, but am grateful that another church in another part of the country will be blessed with these former members. But then there are the others who simply transfer their membership to another church in our area. I've heard a whole host of reasons why these former members have decided to leave. Here are just a few: 1. The preaching is bad and getting worse. 2. The churc...

I'm glad you asked. Corporate worship at Grace Community Presbyterian Church , where I serve, lasts anywhere from 70 to 90 minutes each Lord's Day morning. The Order of Service (the Bulletin) will contain 3-5 hymns and/or psalms from the psalter (printed with the melody) [ UPDATE: Because of the faithfulness of one of our church members, we now provide a YouTube playlist of the hymns and songs we will be singing each week as well. You can find out why here . ]. It will also contain the doxology which we sing every week, 3-5 additional songs/hymns that we sing during communion (which we celebrate every week), prayers of adoration, invocation, confession and consecration. An Offertory during the Offering is provided as well as a page of "Communion Reflections", which are quotes from Christians that help us focus on the work and worth of Jesus and our desperate need for Him. There is a Call to Worship and a Confession of Faith as well as a reading from the Old Testam...

The grief is deep when a loved one dies. The sadness of having to send a friend off on a new adventure far from you is palpable. Packing up and driving our first-born to college is on our agenda in the coming new year. I get a pit just typing about it. Goodbyes are hard. In every instance there is a longing to be together again. There is a heaviness to the memories, the pictures bring a new ache. We were born for one another; for communion and community. So every time we utter "goodbye", that little word precedes a tear at the "ever-presence" of that relationship. After the tearing comes the tears. As a Christian, I want to dig around and seek out hope and comfort and permanence when I'm grieving or sad or I ache.  I want heart-ache and unpleasantness to toss me to God, His Word and His promises. God's Word, specifically, Revelation 21:1-4 , does just that; pulls me to God and His promises. There we see that we will experience the reality tha...

[A sleepless night provoked this post a few months ago. It sat in my draft folder until now. Reader beware.] Considering the prospect of giving my daughters away makes this dad think. As a minister I may even officiate their weddings. These are my initial thoughts of what I want to say to them as their dad, first, and as their pastor, second. Today, you enter into the covenant of marriage. As your father, I will walk you down the aisle and place your hand into your future husband's hand. In moments, you will hear the pronouncement, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." With those seven words everything changes. God tells us this in Genesis 2:24 . At this moment you leave us and cleave to one another in marriage. The whole covenant context changes. You are now his wife.  You've been raised as our covenant daughter. We promised to raise you in the fear and admonition of the Lord in and with the community of believers. We sought to do that. You have been such a...

I am a Presbyterian for a thousand different reasons. One of them is relevant to this post. As a Presbyterian, I do not succumb to the very real experience Ron Edmondson addresses in this post ; the loneliness of a pastor. ( Please read that brief post before continuing. This post will make more sense when you do.) Over the past couple of years, in my presbytery, we've had the sad responsibility of addressing tragic circumstances among other ministers in our presbytery. In many of the cases deception and long-nurtured secret sin was exposed. Discipline was imposed with the ultimate purpose, bathed in prayer, that repentance and reclamation would result. Our presbytery has attempted and is attempting to put in place opportunities to address these challenges. Ideas discussed are meetings of pastors within smaller geographical regions for lunch and discussion, a pre-presbytery seminar (once a quarter) to fellowship, learn and pray with one another, designating a portion...

Let's be honest, and I mean that sincerely. I have friends and extended family members that believe it is important that abortion should be a woman's choice and that it should remain safe, legal and accessible. There are those who argue for abortion rights on the basis that it is a human right  and must necessarily be protected in order to achieve gender equality worldwide. I disagree...completely. I want to be honest about why I disagree with my family and friends who support a woman's right to have access to safe and legal abortion. Abortion is the act of killing a baby while in the mother's womb. In some cases, the baby is "partially born" before it is killed. The recent videos filmed and provided by " The Center for Medical Progress " have left no doubt about the premise; abortion kills the baby while in the mother's womb. For it is upon this premise that the parts; hearts, livers, etc. and tissues of the dead baby can be sold, dona...

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

You may have heard about a congregation in San Francisco, CA that recently decided to receive into faithful membership those who live non-celibate lives with people of the same sex. This congregation was a church in the denomination I serve, the PCA , a few years ago. They left the PCA and joined the RCA denomination . You can read their announcement here . A picture from worship this past Sunday at Glory, PCA where they had over 30 visitors! A pastor of a PCA church in San Francisco responded to this announcement in a letter to those at City Church, RCA . The pastor is Chris Robins and the church he is planting is Glory, PCA . I have been in contact with Chris and asked for his permission* to reprint his letter here. He graciously gave me permission. Please read Chris' letter below. Consider joining me in praying for the vital work of Glory, PCA in San Francisco. We need more bold churches committed to loving sinners and doing so without compromising Scripture or bringin...

What a wonderful providence of God that Kevin DeYoung's newest book, " Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough and What That Means for You and Me " would be published right now. With the attempt to redefine what marriage is, what sex is and for whom, God's Word and our understanding of it (and Him) seems to be up for grabs, culturally speaking. Not too long ago my alma mater was in the midst of controversy over the nature of God's Word. This too provided the opportunity for the publication of a wonderful resource. (Find my very brief thoughts on the controversy and links to the resource here .) Rev. DeYoung is a gifted writer. I've enjoyed reading most of what he has written. (I've never liked referring to author's by their last name only. It sounds almost disrespectful to my Texas-born ears. I will refer to Rev. DeYoung as Rev. DeYoung a day this is especially appropriate given the subject matter. He is a mini...

Our last brief post  was on the subject of God's Word; the Bible. This, Dr. Gaffin makes clear, is our only reliable and true source of Truth. Do you believe God's Word is trustworthy? Complete? Authoritative? Compelling?  Where you stand on these questions will have everything  to do with where you stand on the work of Jesus on your behalf; His ongoing work in you by His Spirit, His final work of consummation and everything in between. I just finished reading  Kevin DeYoung's recently published book " Taking God at His Word " and I have also written a review of it which I will post later today or tomorrow.. That will be our next order of business. (Just so you'll know I plan on strongly encouraging you to buy the book   in the next post). But in the meantime and just to whet the whistle, read this . Kevin DeYoung's book is very relevant to our discussion of "By Faith, Not By Sight" which we will take up again after the next post/review.

This is the seventh post in a series on the book,  "By Faith, Not By Sight"  by Dr. Richard Gaffin. The links to the previous posts are here:   #1    #2    #3    #4    #5   #6 This may be the most important thing for us to remember as we think about all that is before us; this is God's Word. As is already clear, we are focusing on the Apostle Paul's words found in the Bible.  But we do so understanding that Paul is an apostle; "...that is, as he is an instrument of God's revelation, authorized by the exalted Christ, for attesting and interpreting salvation manifested in Christ." (BFNBS, pg 7) There are at least two crucial implications we can draw from this. First, this is not some isolated academic or practical study we are about. When dealing with God's very Word we are dealing with God Himself as speaker. We are responsible to Him for how we understand Paul. Care must be taken. Second, these letters of Pau...