I couldn’t fully understand why St. Paul called Timothy “my own son” the first time I read his epistle. Until 2012, I met an elderly in my hometown church, who made me realize that truly Timothy was St. Paul’s “true son” nurtured by the gospel. This elder, like St. Paul, has been nourishing my life with the love of the gospel, resembling “a true mother” to love and influence me. She is nanny Du Gaicao from Jiaocun Church, Lingbao City, Henan Province.

Many clergy say that both their greatest joy and deepest pain are derived from serving: they rejoice in the service to God, while they also suffer, mostly due to the disharmony in fellow worker relationships. Throughout church history, there have always been internal and external troubles, but internal troubles often tend to be more troubling to pastors. The reason is if troubles come from the outside, pastors and fellow workers can bear them together, which is a beautiful testimony of the lives

Many pastoral staff have raised the same question: how to effectively shepherd the aged believers who have found their faith in the Lord for many years? These believers have lived a faithful life for dozens of years. As long as the church gate opens, they are always the early-birds coming for Sunday services or prayer meetings. In spite of the temporal church closure during the pandemic, they only feel relieved after putting their tithes in the offering box of the church. Their commitment and

Shufen is a student of mine, who graduated several years ago. She became an ordained pastor in 2019 and all went smoothly until last year. One day she suddenly called me, asking for mental counseling. After a brief greeting, she said eagerly: “Ms. Feng, I’m very painful. For months, I’ve been haunted by the thought of self-abandon. I find myself in low spirits and I am even too anxious to sleep or eat. You know we as clergy can’t change our work at will. But the feeling of grievance is killing m

From last November 1 to 12, the 26th annual UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) convened in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. The conference gathered world leaders who came to discuss global concerns, namely the responsive solutions and actions for climate change. The participants reviewed and evaluated the progress made since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, and they summarized the setbacks and failures.

Churches had to suspend congregational activities a while before due to the aggregated epidemic outbreak. Hence, many believers could hardly see each other. A scene that I’ve seen from the first service since the church reopened, gave me warm feelings. Two sisters were thrilled and about to give a hug to each other as they hadn’t seen each other for a long time. But they only did hand waving and head nodding as greetings because a church member interrupted them with good-willingness, who reminde

The past two years, troubled by the pandemic, saw many problems that constantly emerged in those booming churches, especially the number and quality of their church membership.

From the previous article, we know a Christian being severely troubled by a thorn in him. And that thorn is simply his fear of coughing, a compulsive feeling he could not let go of for a long period of time. During this counseling session, we will proceed with the discussions on what the “cough” really stands for, and why he’s so frightened about it.

There was a Christian with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), who had tussaphobia. Such fear of coughing may sound hilarious to ordinary people, for a cough seems harmless and no need to be afraid. Even the person having such a phobia knows it is not that dreadful, but the fear still comes out of control. Though he felt a desperate need to get away from it, he never made it. The almost decade-long suffering and fear show no sign of ceasing despite prayers and Bible readings as he claimed. For