Category: Church
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The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times
Dr. Os Guinness speaks to Acton Institute, a message titled: The Power of the Gospel No Matter How Dark the Times. This message, though long, is powerful, and is related to a post I published earlier this week titled: Culture Shaping Power of the Church.
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Culture Shaping Power of the Church
Os Guinness, in his excellent book, Renaissance, concerning the church in midst of the present challenges unprecedented in Western Culture, notes the culture changing and culture shaping power of the gospel, when the gospel is both declared by God’s People and is actively shaping God’s People. When many of our churches are caving in pursuit of…
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Race and the Church RVA: Telling the Truth
On Saturday morning January 30, scores of church leaders, along with a smathering of parishioners, gathered in the basement of an old department-store-turned-church in Richmond, Virginia for a discussion on Race and the Church. The invited primary speaker was Dr. Sean Lucas, pastor of historic First Presbyterian Church of Hattiesburg, Mississippi; adjunct professor at Reformed…
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6 Ways Ministry Spouses Get Hurt By the Church
Researcher Thom Rainer identifies Six Ways Ministry Spouses Get Hurt. I have listed them below, slightly reworded: Complaints About Their Minister-Spouses Complaints About the Children Unreasonable Expectations About Ministry Involvement Gossip & Murmering Isolation Attacking the (non-Staff) Spouse to Get Desired Results Every non-staff church leader should be aware of these. Every church member should…
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Prayer Group Participants
Earlier this week, for a change of pace, and to set our orientation, I had our staff open our weekly meeting with a period of liturgical prayer. This kind of prayer is not really part of our tradition. It appears, from what I occasionally read, that some from our tradition are intensely opposed to such…
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Marks of Revival
I had the privilege last week to meet a man convinced we are headed for revival. He is a gentle man, who thinks often of God, wishing for a return to some semblance of the way things used to be – minus the overt sins of racism and sexism that were so widely tolerated in…
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Illustration of a Healthy Church
If our congregation were to be a church with the gospel, plus a group that enjoys being together in community, but we were not on mission to reach out to our neighbors and the Nations, for the sake of advancing Christ’s Kingdom, then we would just be another social club for people to attend. Gospel…
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Authentic Church: Road to a Re-newed Reality
I have been mulling on something the late Francis Schaeffer said: “There are four things which are absolutely necessary if we as Christians are going to meet the need of our age and the overwhelming pressure we are increasingly facing.” No doubt that the Church, in our culture as well as other cultures, faces increasing…
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Is This Why We Don’t Engage Our Neighbors?
Here is a challenging perspective and good instruction from Leon Brown, church planter and pastor at Crown & Joy Presbyterian Church in South Richmond, Virginia: “I fear that one of the reasons we don’t know how to engage non-Christians to talk about Jesus is because we’ve forgotten how to have regular conversations. If the conversation…
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Advent Conspiracy
For many Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – marks opening day for an exciting month long contact sport – shopping! For many others it is just one more cause for anxiety. In the midst of the seasonal hubbub, take a moment to watch this short video from the Advent Conspiracy. Share the joy…
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Chrysalis Factor
There are times I feel somewhat like a sea captain who took charge of a ship that had experienced unprecedented prosperity under the direction of his predecessor, and then sprung a leak a few months into his tenure. Don’t get me wrong, I love the church where I serve, but some of the challenges came…
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Top 3 Needs of the Church Today
The late great John Stott was asked: “What are the top three needs of the church today?” Here is Stott’s prophetic three-fold response: The church’s most basic need is to remember what kind of community it is, and in particular its double identity. For God calls his people out of the world to belong to…
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Bounded-Set vs Centered-Set
Some time back I posted a piece titled Numbering Those On the Ranch, exploring the concept of what missiologist Alan Hirsch refers to as a “centered-set” metric for evaluating a church. More recently I stumbled across a post by Bob Thune, of Coram Deo Church in Omaha, explaining his understanding of Centered-Set verses the more…
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Christian’s Cultural Assessment Toolbox
Here’s an astute observation from Os Guinness: “Christians simply haven’t developed Christian tools of analysis to examine culture properly. Or rather, the tools the church once had have grown rusty or been mislaid. What often happens is that Christians wake up to some incident or issue and suddenly realize they need to analyze what’s going…
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In Spirit Produced Corporateness
As I reflect upon the need of our church to constantly cultivate community among those within our congregation, as well as between those already part of the congregation and those who have newly arrived, I am pondering the poignancy of this statement by Stanley Grenz, from his book Theology for the Community of God: “Only…
