GPS—3 Ways to Love Your Pastor Well
A navigation system for loving and serving your pastor well—a GPS system: Give, Pray, Serve.
You pastor prays for you. Why do you think that is? It’s not simply because he’s paid to. He prays for you because he loves you and wants you to grow in grace. So one of the most simple ways to love him well is to keep him and his family in your prayers. Send... Continue Reading
Are You Too Old For The Mission Field?
Older Christians are answering the call to fulltime missions and mission agencies and churches are responding with open arms.
Many Christians are realizing in their older years, not that they wasted their youth, but that God was preparing them for their later years. “The Lord didn’t design us to coast out on flowery beds of ease, but to make some sort of difference,” said Nelson Malwitz, founder of Finishers Project, “There is a full... Continue Reading
Statement: Former Church Says Tullian Tchividjian Should Not Be in Ministry
The Session of Willow Creek Church (PCA) in Willow Springs, Fla., issued a statement that Tullian Tchividjian should not return to ministry.
We would also like to state in the clearest possible terms that we do not believe that Mr. Tchividjian should be in any form of public or vocational ministry. Rather, inasmuch as he is truly repentant and in accordance with his membership vows, we would urge him to immediately return to his church of membership,... Continue Reading
Martin Luther’s 7 Characteristics of the Church
Luther derived these seven points from the first table of the Ten Commandments
“These are the true seven principal parts of the great holy possession whereby the Holy Spirit effects in us a daily sanctification and vivification in Christ, according to the first table of Moses. By this we obey it, albeit never as perfectly as Christ.” The Word “First, the holy Christian people are recognized by their... Continue Reading
The Reformation Was Not A “Modern” Event
Reformation studies are nearly always categorized as “early modern”
“The Reformation was much more a medieval than a modern phenomenon. None of the Reformation churches accepted or confessed any of basic tenets of modernity. Whatever differences there were among the modernists, they were all united by locating authority within the self.” It is widely held and assumed that the Reformation was a modern... Continue Reading
The Hillbilly Gospel
Moralistic therapeutic deism is the faith of many Americans…especially amongst the hillbilly population.
The only answer to the hillbilly brokenness is the gospel. And it’s a gospel which isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty but also a gospel which is deeply theological. Cultural Christianity isn’t the answer because it’s part of the problem. A resurgence of Mayberry might address some of the brokenness but it will just... Continue Reading
Enough is Enough
Jesus said what he said about divorce to protect women, not to imprison them.
Our loyalty to marriage is good and noble and true. But when loyalty to a relational structure allows evil to continue it is a false loyalty, even an evil loyalty. Christian leaders and friends, we have to see that some evil men are using their wives’ Christian guilt and our teaching about the sanctity of... Continue Reading
America’s Declining Faith In Pastors And Churches
Whatever their personal beliefs, Americans’ faith in their pastors and churches has been in significant decline for decades.
Religious authority is increasingly grounded in individual preferences, not religious leaders or institutions. That’s the new normal for American religion. When it comes to determining whether we’re “good Christians,” we rank following individual conscience higher than following the actual teachings of our churches, says Duke proessor Mark Chaves. And just one in ten agrees the local... Continue Reading
Top 7 Nations With Worst Record of Christian Persecution: Report
A new report reveals believers are facing a rising level of intolerance and severe oppression, particularly under seven nations of concern.
The seven nations where persecution was branded so extreme that “it could scarcely get any worse” include: Afghanistan, Iraq (northern), Nigeria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Syria. “A virulent and extremist form of Islam emerged as the number one threat to religious freedom and was revealed as the primary cause of persecution in many... Continue Reading
The Real Reason Evangelicals Don’t Baptize Babies
A lens shaped by revivals, rugged individualism, and a sacramental theology untethered from the church’s means of grace makes conversion the chief article of the faith.
For most evangelicals, what stands in the way of baptizing infants isn’t a lack of biblical evidence, but an interpretive lens they wear when reading Scripture. That lens–shaped by revivals, rugged individualism, and a sacramental theology untethered from the church’s means of grace–makes conversion the chief article of the faith. We should expect this, since... Continue Reading
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