When a church counsels, it is saying more than the Bible is true; it is saying that the God of the Bible is real. He comes to change lives, families, communities, cultures and the entire cosmos. You can actually see those changes! When a church counsels, it is engaging in one of the most important... Continue Reading

Part of the reason is that Scotland sees its remaining Calvinist bodies through magnifying-glasses.  We cannot shake off our fascination with the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church.  They are part-bogeymen, part scarecrow, part dinosaur and part Super Ego.  Between them they receive as much media coverage as the Church of England, yet the... Continue Reading

I have to confess that a significant minority of the new songs I come across each year on various websites, events and albums fail to do any of the above. They are little more than a re-ordering of stock phrases in circulation among existing songs, just married to a new tune. It feels to me... Continue Reading

While affirming the place of the gospel as the boundary of fellowship, we want to insist that the whole counsel of God is the center of fellowship, and that pursuit of this center is of irreplaceably great value for worship, fellowship, and devotion. Further, this center is not merely doctrinal: the center of Christianity includes... Continue Reading

When a church commits to counsel people, they are saying that they are willing to get down in the trenches of daily life and love people with the redemptive compassion of the Incarnate One. They are saying that good preaching, as important as it is, is just the beginning of ministry of the Word not... Continue Reading

Be a learner not a knower. Be a server not a master. Be a listener not a speaker. Go with only the expectations that you are open to God’s plan and you want to be used in any way he wants to use you. Go with the heart that you have been sent by God.... Continue Reading

Benjamin Johnson, whom Bishop Cummins sent to South Carolina to receive the African-American Episcopal churches and people, wrote, “It is enough for us to know that we have accepted the Divine policy. In its true Catholicity our Church is no ‘respecter of persons’; Barbarians, Scythians, bond and free, have their rights of the Church and... Continue Reading

The problem, as I see it, is not with the lack of imagination of this new generation, but with religious institutions themselves—many of which have allowed their leaders to become rock stars, their communities to become clubs of like-minded believers, and their doctrines to become rigid, with an over-emphasis on discipline and damnation for things... Continue Reading

What began to emerge was a consistent and controversial pattern—one that might damage Woodberry’s career, warned Smith. “I thought it was a great, daring project, but I advised [him] that lots of people wouldn’t like it if the story panned out,” Smith says. “For [him] to suggest that the missionary movement had this strong, positive... Continue Reading

I would put forward the idea that we who hold to biblical truth without giving in to the “god of numbers” are not splitting theological and meaningless hairs at all, but seeking to uphold the very foundations of the Christian Faith. I believe those who measure the success of their ministry by the “nickels and... Continue Reading