One church in the city of Slovyansk north of here, the Good News Church, has opened a school specifically to train missionaries for work in this conflict zone. So far, about 75 people have completed the one-month course and deployed along the 300-mile front. It is a spiritual turning of the tables, of sorts. When... Continue Reading

Cultural anthropology is a heady and academic-sounding phrase. But think of it simply as mapping our cultural moment – tracing the contours of the cultural & social milieu we inhabit. I’ve found that many leaders who are ineffective in mission have an inadequate grasp of cultural anthropology. They’re working with maps that are 30 or... Continue Reading

“Miller was well-loved by his students at Old Princeton and he taught a broader range of subjects than would be considered justifiable today. This was a time before the rise of the narrowly defined specialist. Miller was, like the later Princetonian Benjamin B. Warfield, a true Renaissance man. There was no pitting of the life... Continue Reading

For the glory of Christ and the edification of His people, the Ligonier Statement on Christology seeks to encapsulate the historic, orthodox, biblical Christology of the Christian church in a form that is simple to confess, useful to help teach the church’s enduring faith, and able to serve as a common confession around which believers... Continue Reading

Myth 4. You should judge your message based on how well you did: So I’m a recovering performance addict. In my early years of preaching, I was obsessed with ‘how well I did.’… The early questions were far too much about me and not nearly enough about the content or the audience. As someone once... Continue Reading

But with dwindling reserves—the IMB now has enough cash for only two more years at its current rate of spending—expenses needed to be cut. In November, CT examined whether the situation spells the end of the full-time missionary. “The financial realities are clear,” Platt told CT at the time. “[I]n order to get to a... Continue Reading

The idea that a pastor would sometimes say uncomfortable things and impose discipline is foreign to many congregations today, but that is because for more than a generation we in church leadership have promoted the pastor-as-life-coach model while never talking about the hard road and the narrow gate that leads to salvation. Our parishes need... Continue Reading

  Conservative evangelicals have tried to counter such trends with their own publishing efforts — salvos in what a recent Christianity Today editorial called “the New Battle for the Bible.” Two years ago, Kevin DeYoung, a prominent Michigan pastor and co-leader of a national network of theologically conservative churches, published Taking God at His Word:... Continue Reading

Let us be sure that when we go looking for the approbation of Christian antiquity, that we are not chasing some romanticized ideal of what constitutes the genuine and the pure. The current “chase” after Lent convinces this writer that the evangelical pursuit of romantic ideals is like a stallion, still needing to be tamed.... Continue Reading

“The idea of having an Ofsted inspector sitting in on your church youth group or Sunday school to see if you are an extremist is, I have to say, highly offensive,” the institute’s president Colin Hart wrote. “Ofsted is hardly equipped to judge the intensely complex and sensitive issues of private religious instruction. … It... Continue Reading