Wanting to leave is OK. You shouldn’t feel guilty when you wrestle with the call of God on your life. You don’t have to push the idea of leaving into the back of your mind. You do have to be honest with yourself, and you also must use caution as you face this issue. Here are five warnings to... Continue Reading

It may initially seem absurd to claim a group of Christians who believe the KJV is divinely inspired is like a group of Christians who believe gender identity is so fluid it can change several times a day. But as I’ll show, both fundamentalist groups are strikingly similar in at least seven ways.   In the book of Judges,... Continue Reading

This is a tricky question because it’s so easy to caricature any answer other than a straightforward “No” as sinful Bible-undermining compromise. “See, he says the Bible is not enough. He says the Bible is not sufficient, etc.” So let me try to take some of the heat out of the debate by asking another... Continue Reading

The human preacher is to put for the time and effort to be schooled in preaching, to study and prepare and exegete for preaching, to hone and craft his sermon for preaching, but, in the end, “success is God’s work.”[1]As humbling as that is for preachers, it is absolutely true.   From Toastmasters to TED... Continue Reading

Being clear about policies is fine. But even more central is being clear about what a church believes. A church’s policies ought to be grounded in clear biblical teaching, but “Church Clarity” does not aim at “evaluating theology or doctrine.” And yet this is precisely what the Lord expects churches to do.    On Wednesday,... Continue Reading

Luther preached about a direct encounter with the Lord, and preached in a way that expected listeners to experience the Lord directly. At the heart of the success of the Protestant Reformation was its bold and clear proclamation of Christ.   It’s not just in Wittenberg, Geneva or Cambridge that you can find one. In... Continue Reading

The principle of Scripture alone, rightly understood, does not mean the church of any given time or place operates by the Bible alone without reference to the traditions of the church through the ages. Rather, the sola of sola Scriptura means that the Bible alone is the fountain and touchstone for all authoritative teaching and tradition. This point especially... Continue Reading

Pastors and church leaders, you must understand: engaging in unnecessary conflict on social media, regardless of the subject or how important you think it is, ultimately damages your witness and clouds people from receiving the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Stop it. No matter how passionate you are about defending the Second... Continue Reading

The people who do their jobs best usually like their jobs most. And we like following people who like what they do. I’ve often wondered if the missing ingredient in many churches is simply an awareness by the congregation that the pastor is really happy to be their pastor—happy to be in the Word each... Continue Reading

For the Puritans, and the Westminster Assembly especially, preaching was only right preaching when the text was central; for the responsible preacher, the Scripture passage was to guide the sermon, not allowing his sermon to mold the Scripture or to go beyond what the text was saying.   The Puritan movement was known firstly as... Continue Reading