Rather than making the church yet another busy segment of our lives, what would happen if we scaled down our involvements in order to make Sunday worship the central and most vital and well-attended day of the church’s week? What would happen if our services were not marked by the flash and bounce of the... Continue Reading

Be watchful for those who are only in it for the money and are always trying to get increases in salary or take up special offerings for themselves, for those who try to rule the church with an iron fist, those who redefine salvation, those who say that we are the only true church and... Continue Reading

It is important to realize that the regulative principle as applied to public worship frees the church from acts of impropriety and idiocy — we are not free, for example, to advertise that performing clowns will mime the Bible lesson at next week’s Sunday service. Yet it does not commit the church to a “cookie-cutter,”... Continue Reading

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