The church is a people, not a place or a statistic. It’s a body, united into him who is the head. It’s a family, joined together by adoption through Christ. I pray that we pastors would increasingly recognize our awesome responsibility for the particular flocks over which God has made us undershepherds.   A Jarring... Continue Reading

“Almost every day I am in conversation with one of our attorneys. We have engaged six different law firms to respond to the litigations brought against us.” The legal battles dragged on for 12 years before Iker and the Anglicans ultimately won. Finally, a Texas Supreme Court judge ruled that “under the governing documents, the... Continue Reading

Those who lament the declension of many among the present professed ministry should cry day and night unto the Lord to bless his people with pastors after his own heart. Let them also see to it that they walk wisely towards those they have. It behoves established believers to bear their testimony faithfully, but kindly,... Continue Reading

The reality of the magnitude of the devastation is shocking. It is utter devastation. You can see all the pictures and videos online, but it is completely different to drive through it, to live in it. Words cannot describe how bad it is. But the response of the Christian community, of the church, has been... Continue Reading

The issue arose because Greg Johnson, the Presbyterian pastor of Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis who says he is homosexual but celibate, left the Presbyterian Church in America in 2022. Now his church wants to join the EPC. “That has stirred up all kinds of controversy because we’ve got some in the EPC that appear... Continue Reading

Jews to work His glorious purposes to ensure that “all Israel will be saved” and the “fullness of the Gentiles” will come in to the Kingdom of God (cf. Rom. 11). All the unlawful disregard of process inflicted upon our King by the Jews was according to what God’s hand had “predestined to take place”... Continue Reading

Early on in serving the Lord by preaching (almost 25 years ago) I wrote full manuscripts and stuck to them rigorously. Then I’ve used various tools, manuscripts, outlines, passage overviews, 4-part-paper-fold, PowerPoint slides, and a few others to support the work of preaching. However, I’ve never found anything to replace or replicate the importance of... Continue Reading

In the New Testament the house church was common. Judging from Paul’s references in Romans 16:5,10,11,14 & 15, there were at least five house churches in Rome, a city commonly estimated to have a population of a million. Links between these gatherings would have been close. But generally we do not find the infant churches... Continue Reading

Safety, I assumed, required freedom from others: freedom from commitment, something as close to full material and psychological autonomy as possible. But freedom from others had left me enslaved to an untethered, empty self. In these times it became obvious that the freedom I was pursuing turned out to be utter isolation. Maybe I could... Continue Reading

We do wish the church could completely break free of the seeming barrier of race. We can personally attest that Blacks and Whites both make wonderful friends and Blacks and Whites, on the downside, are all just sinners saved by grace. We need to remember the wonderful and freeing truth that “If God be for... Continue Reading