The Traditional Plan, which got nearly 56%, reaffirms current United Methodist teaching on marriage as male and female. One Church Plan, which got nearly 49%, would overturn that teaching and compel local congregations to choose their own definition of marriage.   [Editor’s note: Read background information about the meeting of the United Methodist Church meeting... Continue Reading

“When I went to the police station, [I felt] joy to be able to give witness to the gospel,” Miller said. “As a foreign worker, we spend all our time trying to avoid the religious affairs people … but here they were sitting across the table and I didn’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing. …... Continue Reading

God gave church leaders for the building up of the church “building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood” (Ephesians 4:12–13). Man’s failure doesn’t mean God failed you or that His purposes will fail. He... Continue Reading

Pastors are held to a high standard, and they should be. Yet, we must also remember that they and their families have normal decisions to make like other families: where their kids should go to school, what movies they watch, and when and how they vacation. As those in the public eye, pastors (and their... Continue Reading

When we try to generalise about the World church and say that it is “X”, we are actually saying far more about ourselves and our own ethnocentrism than we are about anything else. This is particularly the case when we are criticising the rest of the church, for example saying that there is a “theological famine” around... Continue Reading

The pattern for effective pastors is laid down in the Bible, including the requisite gifts and character. There is no need to re-invent the model, and it is dangerous to do so. Those who try to innovate may seem spectacular for a time but are then likely to crash out or hit early obsolescence. The precursor... Continue Reading

Simply put, total depravity refers to the natural, post-Fall state of all humanity, in particular our innate inability to save ourselves. Apart from God’s supernatural and regenerating work of grace, we’re all spiritually dead God-haters—curved in on ourselves and insatiably satisfied with sin (Eph. 2:3–5).   The last time I wept during a church service... Continue Reading

There have been growing tensions around liberal bishops and other church officials violating rules forbidding same-sex union ceremonies and “self-avowed practicing homosexual” clergy. The 2019 special session of General Conference is tasked with deciding between competing proposals to either liberalize church teaching on sexual morality, or uphold current standards and increase accountability. ST. LOUIS, Mo.,... Continue Reading

Instead of the people of God being ‘salt and light’ and incarnating the presence of God derivatively in the world, the church is incarnating the world under the guise of professed Christianity. The clamour in many congregations and denominations is ‘to be more like the world in order that we might attract the world’. This... Continue Reading

Did I explain the text? Related questions are, Did the congregation walk away from the sermon and have a better understanding of the biblical passage? Did the congregation learn something about the text? The last thing you want your congregation to do is to walk out of church and be filled with awe and wonder,... Continue Reading