Category: Church
-
Practical Difference Makers
One of the vows folks are required to affirm if they are to become a member of our church – or a member of any church in the PCA, for that matter – is: Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of you ability? This seems simple enough.…
-
Community is Identity
From Tim Chester: The church is not a building you enter. Nor is it a meeting your attend. It is not what you do on a Sunday. To be a Christian is to be part of God’s people and to express that in your life through belonging to a local Christian community. Our Belonging We…
-
Taking Pieces of Heaven to Place of Hell On Earth
Jesus says: “I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not stand up…” –Matthew 16.18 First it is important to remind ourselves that in this challenge Jesus is calling his church to take an Offensive stike, not a Defensive response. The church is to take the initiative, go, and storm the gates. This verse…
-
Prophets, Priests, and Kings
An important concept to explore and implement in the ministry of the local church is the reflection of the Offices of Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King. This is known as Tri-Perspectivalism or Multi-Perspectivalism. I have written and spoken a little about this, but I am still far more a student than an expert when it comes…
-
Living Missionally in the Mountain Empire
In this video Tim Keller offers some insights about ministry in areas that still largely hold to traditional conservative values. This is helpful to me because the place where I live and serve is still largely characterized this way. While I embrace a missional mindset, how our church lives that out in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia…
-
Externally Focused Quest
Most churches have a subtle, perhaps even unspoken, objective. It is driven by the question: “How can we be the best church in our community?” How a church answers that question determines the approach to membership, staffing, budget, etc. In a book I am now reading, Externally Focused Quest, authors Eric Swanson & Rick Rusaw ask…
-
Being Sent
This past Sunday I offered a brief exposition of John 17.6-21 & John 20.21, explaining what it means to be “sent” into our community and world in the same way God the Father sent Jesus into our world. These texts demand that we understand, as John Stott says: “Our God is a missionary God.” They…
-
Deep Church & Ordinary Means
Unbeknownst to me when I posted earlier today, two of my long-time friends interviewed Jim Belcher, author of Deep Church, earlier this year for their podcast: Ordinary Means. In this interview Jim introduces and discusses his book with two guys, Matt Bohling & Shaun Nolan, who unhesitatingly identify themselves with the Traditional Church. Great discussion… To listen click: Deep Church.
-
The Deep Church
At the suggestion of a friend, I recently read Jim Belcher’s Deep Church. I was not disappointed. This is thoughtful and thought-provoking book. The subtitle really captures the theme of this book: A Third Way. With all the discussions about “how” to do church, and the polemic approaches of the Traditionalists and the Emerging/Emergent, some of us…
-
Won’t You Be My Neighbor
A group of pastors invited the mayor of their city to discuss his dream for the city, along with the issues that were hindering that dream from becoming a reality. The mayor came with a list of pervasive issues that the pastors in this group were eager to address: at-risk kids, elderly shut-ins, dilapidated housing, and hunger. But before addressing…
-
7 Rules for Reconciliation
To live in community is to live with – at least – the potential for conflict. I have acted wrongly on too many occasions; I have wronged others; and I have been wronged by others. I find few things more emotionally taxing than living in conflict. But God calls us to live in community, where…
-
Is “Missional” Just “Evangelistic”?
In his book The Present Future, Reggie McNeal reveals the contrasts in the different ways leaders can think about the church and its ministry. McNeal reveals the different paradigms that pastors can have as they fulfill their ministry in the church. Being missional is first a shift in thinking about the nature of the church.…
-
A Missional Church IS…
A missional church is rooted in the purpose of God, and understands that God is on a mission to reclaim a People for himself and restore a Creation to it’s orignal beauty. This is known as missio dei – Mission of God. A missional church recognizes that our culture in North America is no longer an…
-
Reflecting Jesus in Christ’s Church
If, as most Christians profess, Jesus is indeed the only Head of the Church, it seems reasonable that Christ’s Church should reflect His personality in it’s ministries and structure. One way that Jesus is reflected in the ministry of faithful churches has been the recovery of a balanced Word & Deed holistic ministry. By balanced…
