by Soo-Inn Tan | Jan 10, 2025 | 2025, Community, Loneliness, Small Groups
A recent article on the BBC website reinforced something that we have known for a while — that one can be lonely in a crowd. … other people — counterintuitively — aren’t always the antidote to loneliness. They may even be part of the...
by Soo-Inn Tan | Mar 22, 2024 | 2024, Community, Loving Others, Small Groups
How committed are your small-group members? This year I will have a number of opportunities to teach on healthy small groups. I will probably teach about the commitments test. There are at least three levels that small-group members are committed to in their...
by Soo-Inn Tan | Feb 23, 2024 | 2024, Community, Corporate Worship, Small Groups, Spiritual Friendship
Did you know there are three kinds of loneliness? I didn’t until I read the first chapter of Together (1). (Dr Vivek Murthy is the 19th surgeon general of the United States.) Here is what he wrote: Researchers have identified three...
by Soo-Inn Tan | Sep 7, 2023 | 2023, Christian Living, Community, Small Groups, Spiritual Friendship
Many in our churches are hungry for God. This should not surprise us. We live in a lonely world where many are hungry for relationships with man and God. It is not helped that many churches reduce the faith to either head knowledge of Scripture and/or activism, and...
by Soo-Inn Tan | Oct 7, 2022 | 2022, Articles, Small Groups, Soo-Inn Tan, Spiritual Friendship
The book was good, but the material was intense, and I knew I would need time to process what I was reading. So I “cheated” and read the last chapter. The book was The Connected Life by Todd W. Hall (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022). What he wrote echoed...
by Soo-Inn Tan | Sep 30, 2022 | 2022, Articles, Loving Others, Small Groups, Soo-Inn Tan, Spiritual Friendship
A brother came up to me after I had preached a sermon on spiritual friendship. He said that he was very touched by the sermon. He had been in ministry for many years and had been friendly with many people. But that day it had struck him that he had no close personal...
