Resources

This page will have resources that can be accessed and will be helpful to the person

How to Select a Church

A post on how to select a church, what you need to weigh, and how you need to look out for yourself. This post discusses how the internet is your friend and how to check out a place. How to use blogs, news sources and sex offender registries to evaluate a church. What is its doctrine? Where did the pastor go to school? What theological influences and groups does the church associate with?

How to Deal with a Faith Crisis

This is a series I did on Fridays for nearly 4 months on what a faith crisis is and how to deal with one. I based this off my own experience, my feelings and what was going through my noodle. I also wrote extensively on how a person can relate, engage or walk with someone who is in the midst of a prolonged faith crisis. This is designed to give some advice for those of you who have someone in your life who are undergoing a faith meltdown. This is not a formula, this is not an end all be all. This I hope are some practical suggestions. That said here are the posts for the entire series.

• An introduction to a faith crisis and the plans for the series.
• What does a faith crisis feel like? A personal essay on what it was like to experience a crisis that rocks you to your core.
• This is an overview of the doubts I dealt with during my crisis of faith.
• This is the first post on how to engage someone. First recommendation…grow thick skin, don’t take what the atheist/agnostic or person in a crisis says personally. Focus on the long term.
• The importance of unconditional love when you engage someone in a faith crisis.
• Bracing for the long haul is also needed to be remembered. Some people may be in a faith crisis for years – possibly decades. Some may not exit one. This is my essay urging someone to keep the situation in a long term perspective.
• The importance of prayer is also to be remembered, that is what this post is about. When I walked away from the Christian faith for years I felt people pray for me.
• If you are going to engage someone in a faith crisis…you need to be open about your doubts.
• If you are going to engage someone in a faith crisis it will be deeply uncomfortable to you. Being uncomfortable is where you will have to camp out to reach someone during this time.
• When engaging someone in a faith crisis you may feel like you are failing. In reality you may be closer to helping than you know. This also explores the harm of suddenly pulling away.
• This is my story of in despair trying church after church in the DC area and none of them really being able to help out. The problem was that many lacked the intellectual ability to be able to engage an agnostic.
• This post deals with how a church you are involved in can feed a person’s atheism/agnosticism. This deals with Redeemer Arlington when it was associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries. For an agnostic stuck on the problem of evil Sovereign Grace justified atheism by allegedly engaging in child sex abuse cover up.
• This post deals with how to relate to an agnostic on the other side of the fence. You find common interests, you find ways to relate.
• This post deals with the importance of building trust with someone in a faith crisis. How do you reach across the divide or chasm of faith?
• This is a post on what Andrew White of Redeemer Arlington, and an Air Force Captain, 2005 USAF Academy should have done when he was evangelizing me.
• In this post I explain what Dee Parsons, Danny Risch, Scott Van Swernigan, and James Crestwood did correctly and how they helped bring me back to faith.
• This post which I decided to include deals with the potential Redeemer Arlington is sitting on if the church repents of its history of SGM. That is my recommendation in order to make it stronger.

 

Greg Marshall teaching at Westbrook Church, this sermon references my faith crisis which consumed half my thirties.