What is the Church?
What do you think of when you hear the word church? Perhaps your mind conjures up images of ancient cathedrals, resplendent with gothic spires, stained glass windows, and vaulted ceilings.
God’s silence
Renee James was 18 when she decided to stop praying. If God was going to be silent, she thought, she would be silent too. She had been praying for years for the healing of her brothers, Sean and Niall, one suffering from autism and the other from Down syndrome. Yet there had been no answer.
The (un)expected Messiah
“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”[1](Corrie ten Boom)
The Lord’s Supper: Remembering Christ’s death
Two thousand years ago, Jesus asked us to remember the Lord's supper. What made it so special?
Never enough likes
The American Economic Review recently published the results of the largest randomized study ever conducted to measure the impact on the quality of life that deactivation ones Facebook account might have.
The things that really matter
It is said that time makes us wiser. How wise have we become after a global pandemic with millions of deaths, a war on our borders, economic problems, and many personal tragedies in which we are caught as if in the grip of a great storm?
The dangerous promise of a larger church
Why do some churches grow while others do not? This question gave rise to one of the most influential movements in American evangelical Christianity in the 20th century. Its history shows how easily a question about fruitfulness can become a question about success.
COVID-19: How do you recognise a conspiracy theory in a pandemic?
The Colorado beetle that threatened the potato crop of the former GDR in 1950 might have been an American method of sabotage against the Eastern bloc. A sinister German plot might have been the cause of the Spanish flu. Perhaps AIDS emerged as a biological weapon developed by the United States and has been tested on prisoners and minorities. Every crisis humanity has...
COVID-19: How does anxiety affect us?
A global crisis situation, such as that generated by the current pandemic, is a complex picture with many variables bringing high levels of emotional distress. During a pandemic, many people will face a wide range of reactions and emotions, and the psychological impact will often be greater than the medical one.
Norma Nashed | Poverty made her a mother to thousands of children
Norma Nashed has been running the Restore a Child organisation for more than two decades, helping 4,000 children in ten African countries.
“Are you as old as you feel?” The factors of successful ageing
The factors behind successful ageing have been the subject of research for decades, but the subjective side of ageing still needs to be explored. Because successful ageing is more than an attempt to defy age and its frailties, it is a process in which, in addition to losses, benefits need to be taken into account—not just those delivered by good genetics or a...
I’m here! | friendship and interest in each other
I'll leave my heart as payment among the coins, and pass... – Nichita Stănescu
Caught between the hands of a clock
Since Hans Selye introduced the concept of stress into the language of science almost seven decades ago, it has now become firmly rooted in our vocabulary and permeates all levels of everyday life. One common cause of stress, though unevenly distributed among us mortals, weaves enough threads into its intricate fabric that it cannot be entirely avoided: the relationship with time.
When online chats turn dangerous
Sexual extortion or “sextortion” is a form of blackmail where someone threatens to share an intimate image or video of you unless you meet their demands. Often, they’ll intimidate you by threatening to send the compromising content to everybody on your contact list unless you send money or more explicit images or videos of yourself.
Parenting school: the counsellor and consultant phases
This article is the third and last in the "Parenting School" series. The first two parts were published in the May and June 2020 issues of Semnele Timpului, the Romanian version of the ST Network.


























