vassal of the King

PARENTING AND DISCIPLINE HELP: your kid slanders someone else. Geoffrey R. Kirkland     The Scenario.  You have a child who has slandered one of his siblings to a friend. Consequently, the friends no longer want to hang out with this individual (for a particular activity on a particular day) because one of your children slandered one of his siblings.  You get words of it from another one of your children.  What do you do?  How do you respond?     The Counsel to the Parent  Maybe this has never happened to you, but it did happen in our family. This makes for a golden biblical counseling opportunity that opens the door fully for gospel proclamation.  Of course, the easy (and lazy!) path to take would be to sharply chastise the kid and say: “Don’t do that again!” Or worse, you could choose to do nothing about it (until, of course, he does it again).  What do you do?  When I got word that one of my children slandered a sibling to another friend and thus that friend no longer wanted to spen

WHY DO YOU REQUIRE A "NEW MEMBER INTERVIEW?" Geoffrey R. Kirkland Christ Fellowship Bible Church    Why new member interviews? Question:  When people want to join your church, why do you require a new member “interview”?   Answer:  We do so for the following six reasons:  It allows church elders to sit with the individual and cultivate continued interpersonal communication so as to get to know them better.  It allows the elders to ask 3 primary questions:  TESTIMONY:  please articulate your salvation-testimony.  GOSPEL:  please articulate the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. SERVICE:  where and how do you plan to serve and plug in at this local church? It helps us as elders to know if they need clarification on a point of the gospel as they articulate it (so we can help them, give them a resource for further study).  It allows us as elders to reassure the individual that we shepherd-elders want to care for all the flock of God that the Lord entrusts to our care.  It provides a

  PARENTING & DISCIPLINE HE LPS: practical scenarios  Geoffrey R. Kirkland Christ Fellowship Bible Church  In this post, I will post a hypothetical scenario about a child that disobeys his parents in a certain way. Then, I will share some counsel as to what the parent can do in that moment to discipline with firm consistency and with gospel-grace. The Scenario   My 3 year old did not stay in their room as I told them to do.  Let’s say you have a young child and you have put them in their bed with the clear command: Do not come out. Maybe it is a quiet laying down rest time for a part of the afternoon or it could be that you lay them down for sleep at night. Either way: you have given the command to the child to stay in the bed and not to come out. And so you leave and you begin your tasks until a short bit of time passes by and you hear, “Mom…” or “Dad…” and then they proceed to share that they want water. But a bit later on, their bedroom door opens and they come walking out after