Knowing firsthand your flock’s misguided financial, career, and familial hopes will help you know how to preach. It will help you pick the right texts and the right emphases in explicating those texts. This is what makes preaching a ministry, and not simply an exercise.   The preacher paced the stage, staring earnestly out into... Continue Reading

Throughout the book of Acts, God uses prayer as a means to achieve His ends. In almost every case, prayer precedes powerful works. First, prayer precedes the filling of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:3 is directly tied to the devoted prayer of the disciples in Acts 1:14. Luke... Continue Reading

Our story as priests aims for the time when Christ will unite all things in himself (Eph 1:10). The heavenly Holy of Holies will descend to earth (Rev 21:2-3), and “the dwelling place of God [will fully be] with man.” Awe and intimacy, which are ours now in Christ, will be ours even more.  ... Continue Reading

“Coming of age” ceremonies are not unique in the history of humankind, of course. Various communities around the world and throughout time have marked the transition of a child into an adult with rituals and ceremonies, possibly the most well-known of these being the Bar Mitzvah in Jewish communities. Historically, age thirteen is when a... Continue Reading

In one of his many books, Spurgeon made a comment well worth hearing. It comes from the preface to his book on commentaries. He had written this book to convince pastors of the need to use commentaries and to engage in deep study for their sermon preparation. Spurgeon well knew the value of reading for... Continue Reading

“People were and are afraid of Steve Timmis,” said Andy Stovell, a former elder who led alongside him for 14 years at The Crowded House in Sheffield. Fifteen people who served under Timmis described to Christianity Today a pattern of spiritual abuse through bullying and intimidation, overbearing demands in the name of mission and discipline, rejection of... Continue Reading

As western society moves further away from Biblical standards, we who are devoted to Jesus will become more obvious. We will be an increasingly bright light in an increasingly dark world. This is good news, really, because the hope of the gospel and the glory of God will be revealed. Where is your hope? Is it... Continue Reading

Emmanuel Fuchs, president of the Protestant Church in Geneva and a pastor in Saint-Pierre, added that the invitation indicates that “the climate in Geneva is extremely favorable and fruitful with the Roman Catholic Church. We have made notable progress in terms of ecumenism, especially with the Joint Declaration, signed in 2017, which recognizes our respective... Continue Reading

The ministry of giving has many goals: spreading the gospel, sustaining the church, providing care for distressed individuals (as the Samaritan in Jesus’s story did for the beaten-up, half-dead Jew), and for distressed groups like the Jerusalem Christians, and more. The ministry of giving in all its forms aims to advance the kingdom of God,... Continue Reading

In Nigeria there are Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals and Roman Catholics. But the prosperity gospel has achieved the colossal task of uniting these different traditions. The greatest ecumenical force has been prosperity theology. Our differences do not really matter when we come before the God who wants us all to prosper.   The prosperity gospel... Continue Reading