I recently met with a pastor whose church is emblematic of the hyper-busy congregation. Morning worship attendance is steady at 350, but Sunday evening worship had declined in a decade from 160 to 40. The pastor suggested the church consider eliminating the Sunday evening service, an act that required a majority vote in a business... Continue Reading

Think about it. The most powerful city in the world has almost no vital, orthodox United Methodist churches. Instead there are typically small, liberal congregations that celebrate their diversity but have little capacity for meaningful outreach. The same is true for most large cities. And institutional United Methodism has no ability to address this challenge.... Continue Reading

“Broader churches often tend to focus on “every member ministry”–while minimizing the need for robust pastoral ministry–while more stringently Reformed churches tend to focus on the primacy of pastoral ministry–to the minimizing of vibrant congregational life and ministry. Both approaches often appear to be overreactions to perceived deficiencies or abuses in the outworking of the... Continue Reading

“We have been focused on golden-tongued speakers, impressive and comfortable buildings, and membership growth, and have forsaken the personal touch. We are better known as preachers and speakers, and lesser known as shepherds and pastors. And our elders are viewed more as members of boards of directors and not as brothers who shepherd.”   Preaching is one of the roles of the... Continue Reading

“Baptists and Roman Catholics had long agreed that life begins at conception, but Baptist scholars, unlike their Catholic counterparts, generally did not develop biblical and theological arguments regarding unborn children. By the mid-20th century, abortion rarely came up among Southern Baptists, and average church members had only “a general feeling that abortion was wrong.”  ... Continue Reading

“With Rightmyer the PCUSA has defrocked a pastor who actually believes, upholds and advocates the historically recognizable Christian faith and Reformed theology. This is the same denomination that has repeatedly failed to meaningfully censure pastors who openly defied the mutually agreed upon constitutional standards by which they agreed to be governed. Those pastors clearly broke... Continue Reading

Most recently, I came across an amazing paragraph in one of our earliest Christian apologies.  Aristides, a converted Athenian philosopher, wrote an apology to emperor Hadrian around 125 A.D.  As such, it is one of the earliest patristic writings we possess.  It is a lengthy treatise which compares the God of Christianity with the gods... Continue Reading

When we speak of reaching out to our culture through the gospel, we must be reminded that the gospel is also a culture. In the attempt to “translate” the gospel into the language of the culture, something is lost. We are learning that you have not said “salvation” when you say “self-esteem.” “The American Way” is not... Continue Reading

For one thing, music doesn’t bring people to Jesus. Jesus does that work admirably enough through the Holy Spirit, certainly better than a brush with David Crowder’s beard. But there’s an even deeper flaw in our thinking. Worship is not an evangelistic tool. Missional Meditation Consider this comment I received on the “Modernized Hymns” post.... Continue Reading

Ezekiel 33 calls us all to be watchmen over souls and lives our Lord and Savior died for on a blood-stained cross one Friday over 2,000 years ago. All church leaders must take seriously their responsibilities to present well-thought and biblically based sermons and teaching that come from God’s infallible, inerrant Word and lead the... Continue Reading