Texas Congregation Suing Presbyterian Church (USA) To Keep Property After Leaving Denomination Over Its Stance On Homosexuality
Windwood Presbyterian Church of Houston has been waging a legal battle to not have to pay to keep their church property after having left Presbyterian Church (USA) earlier this year
“Windwood Presbyterian is not the only congregation that has attempted a legal measure to retain possession of their property without having a pay a sum to their former presbytery. Highland Park Presbyterian Church, a megachurch located in Dallas, had voted to leave before Windwood and also filed a lawsuit attempting to not have to pay... Continue Reading
The Goad Of Guilt
If we understand our position in Christ, how should we respond to guilt?
“The kind of regret and sorrow over sin which drives us to Christ to find mercy, grace and forgiveness is helpful. This kind of guilt becomes a goad: it pushes the Christian closer to the Gospel, to the cross, and to the truths of perichoresis. It is ‘regret not to be regretted’.” We have... Continue Reading
Looking For Loopholes In All The Wrong Places
Are you looking for loopholes with regard to moral purity, or listening to Jesus?
“The scribes would define adultery strictly as a married male seducing another man’s wife. That is all that is forbidden according to their own distorted legalistic view. They reduced the 7th commandment to that single prohibition and thus were innocent of other sexual sins. It is not hard to see what other cases of sexual... Continue Reading
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Dispute Over Episcopal Church Property In Texas
The Supreme Court has turned away a pair of appeals from the national Episcopal Church in a dispute over church property claimed by a breakaway sect in Texas.
The justices on Monday [Nov. 3] let stand two Texas Supreme Court rulings in favor of the Fort Worth Episcopal diocese, which has held on to 52 church properties worth more than $100 million since breaking away in 2008. The diocese opposes the consecration of gay bishops, ordination of women and other policies its leadership... Continue Reading
How Susan Hunt Beat the Evangelical Machine
Susan isn’t a big personality. She’s just a little woman who has done very big things
Susan doesn’t care about her profile or her status in the evangelical market. She cares about God’s people and she cares about the truth. Sure, Susan has participated in big conferences, speaking to many people. There were plenty of opportunities for her to become one of the gears in the evangelical machine, well-oiled and programed... Continue Reading
5 Questions to Analyze Any Worldview
Your worldview is the way in which, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, you answer questions like these.
Scripture doesn’t answer all our questions – but its answers to these five questions do give us the big picture necessary to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. And only these answers are a sufficient foundation for life in God’s world. Have you ever tried to put a puzzle together without looking... Continue Reading
What’s Your Worldview?
A review of James N. Anderson's book, What's Your Worldview? An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions
The Christian will come away with a perhaps newfound appreciation for the strength, beauty, and rigor of the Christian worldview. Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, this is a book every church, college ministry, youth ministry, or camp should have in abundance and give away freely and regularly. What’s Your Worldview? is winsome and well informed,... Continue Reading
Christocentric or Christomonic?
We should be careful in preaching Christ from the Scriptures to the exclusion of the Father and the Spirit
My great fear in all this is that in the current trend of preaching, which seeks to be faithfully Christocentric, many will end up becoming Christomonic, the Father’s great and everlasting love to sinners will be diminished and the Spirit’s ongoing work in us will be lost. Twice in the last five years of ministry... Continue Reading
Is Your Church Safe?
The idea behind a safe church is one that anyone can come to and be comfortable with the messages being preached
If you are part of a “safe” church, please run. There is no gospel to be found there. Move on, because there is nothing to be seen in a safe church, other than message after message telling you that you can be a better you if you just keep trying. And if that is the... Continue Reading
Mars Hill Will Dissolve into ‘Individual, Self-governed Churches’
Each of the locations has an opportunity to become a new church
The Mars Hill Church is dissolving itself, with 13 remaining campuses of the troubled mega-church becoming “autonomous, self-governed entitles,” in dramatic news posted Friday on the church website by Lead Preaching Pastor Dave Bruskas. Mars Hill has been a centralized, top-down operation under Lead Pastor Mark Driscoll, who resigned earlier this month after an investigation... Continue Reading