Tag: Gospel-Driven
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To Be Or Not To Be Missional
Dave Harvey is an expert church planter and an astute observer of trends in church leadership. At the Spring 2007 Leadership Conference of Sovereign Grace Ministries Harvey assessed the strengths and weakness of the missional movement in an address titled Watch Your Mission: To Be or Not to Be Missional. One observation Harvey offers is that…
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Gospel Discipling: Gospel & Adoption
World Harvest Mission was founded in 1983 under the leadership of Dr. C. John (Jack) Miller. Dr. Miller’s ministry had been revolutionized by his own rediscovery of the Gospel through studies in Galatians and the work of Martin Luther, and the results of that revolution became evident in multiple conversions in his church and subsequent interest…
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Gospel Discipling: Romans as a Model
It would be presumptuous to claim that we can discern precisely the approach Paul and the first missionaries would have used under direct leadership of the Spirit. But I would encourage a view of his letter to the church(es) of Rome as essentially intending to take those who already believed the Gospel, and who were…
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Gospel Discipling: The Crying Need of the Church
by Stephen Smallman “Thirty years of discipleship programs, and we are not discipled.” This is the startling assessment of Jim Petersen, the visionary leader of the esteemed discipleship ministry, the Navigators. Petersen goes on in the first chapter of his important book, Lifestyle Discipleship, to ask some very hard questions about the real effectiveness of…
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Gospel at the Center
At my core I am committed to gospel-centeredness and being gospel-driven. But I confess I don’t really know what that means. The rich complexity of the gospel and the scope of the implications from the gospel are far beyond my ability to grasp, plumb, or fathom. So I am drawn towards faithful expressions of the gospel that expand my understanding and depth of insight. I am…
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Centered on the Gospel
What does it mean for a church to be gospel-centered? That’s a popular concept these days. What if we were scrambling to be law-centered? The difference may not be so easy to see. Ray Ortland adresses this question with keen insight and simplicity in his brief post: Centered On One or the Other. And what…
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The Least We Can Do
If Jesus could rise from the dead, we can at least rise from our bed, get off our couches and pews, and respond to the Lord’s resurrection life within us, joining Jesus in what he’s up to in the world. We call on others to join us—not in removing ourselves from planet Earth, but to…
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The Gospel Saves From Morality
It sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? The Gospel saves you from morality. Can this be true? It is true. And it is an important truth. And understanding what John Piper is saying in this video can free people from the crushing weight of trying to be good. For others it will free them from self-righteousness, which…
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Ambition
I’ve been listening to the audio of sessions from Acts 29 Network’s 2009 Bootcamp: Ambition. While not everyone will find these talks of interest, I think they are challenging and stimulating for those of us in ministry and church leadership. Ministry for the Long Haul & Ambition (Matt Chandler) Decoding Your City & Ambition (Kevin Cawley)…
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Crazy Love
I don’t know Francis Chan, but I think I like him. I know I like what I see so far. A friend, who is also an Elder in our church, introduced me to Chan a few months ago. He had just finished reading Chan’s book, Crazy Love, and said that Chan was teaching the same…
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3 Short Books I Wish Everyone in My Church Would Read
I read a fair amount. I have been accused, and probably rightly so, of unrealistically pushing books and other reading materials on people who don’t read quite as much; who don’t have the time to read as much; who don’t get “paid” to read as much (as I, in part, am). But there are ideas…
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What is the Gospel?
To say that we, as a church, are centered on the gospel, or Gospel-Driven, is realtively easy. It is quite another thing for the typical church member to know what such phrases actually mean. The following post, by C.J. Mahaney, was originally published on the Together for the Gospel blog. I include it here in…
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The Jesus Pledge
What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? What does it mean to be Gospel-driven? I think my friend, Paul Miller, expresses it beautifully in The Jesus Pledge: I pledge my life to Jesus and the Gospel. I want Jesus not to be just part of my life or something that…
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Enduring Aroma of the Gospel
People don’t earn God’s approval or receive life and salvation because of anything they’ve done. Rather, the only reason they receive life and salvation is because of God’s kindness through Christ. There is no other way. Many Christians are tired of hearing this teaching over and over. They think that they learned it all long…
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Rooted in Sound Doctrine
This is the first of four posts in a series titled Two Contents, Two Realities. These posts are slightly edited excerpts of a paper delivered by Dr. Francis Schaeffer as part of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. As is often true for Schaeffer, his insights are timeless, and as pertinent today as they were a generation ago. …
