Book Review: How Sermons Work
Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff
David Murray wants the church to benefit from the faithful preaching of the Word of God. You can tell just by looking at the callings he’s pursued as listed on his blog, “Leadership for Servants”: he identifies himself, in order, as a follower of Christ, a preacher of the gospel, and a Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And before joining a seminary faculty he served as a pastor in Scotland.
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Are Parachurch Ministries Evil? Bad and Good Arguments for the Parachurch
The local church and the parachurch seem to be in constant conflict.
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Book Review: Preaching Christ from the Old Testament
Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff
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Book Review: Him We Proclaim
Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff
A few weeks ago I read an essay by Carl Trueman in The Wages of Spin where he argued that many preachers employ biblical theology with disastrous results:
One of the problems I have with a relentless diet of biblical-theological sermons from less talented (i.e., most of us) preachers is their boring mediocrity: contrived contortions of passages which are engaged in to produce the answer ‘Jesus’ every week. It doesn’t matter what the text is; the sermon is always the same.[1]
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Book Review: Elders in Congregational Life
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Book Review: The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small Is the New Big for Today's Church
Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff
Contrary to the subtitle, this book is not an argument for small churches in general but for house churches in particular. Moreover, the Dales and Barna advocate a particular movement of house churches known as House2House.
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Book Review: Why Join a Small Church?, by John Benton
Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff
John Benton, pastor of Chertsey Street Baptist Church and editor of Evangelicals Now, strikes back against the mega-church movement with his book Why Join a Small Church? In it, he defends Christians pouring their lives into small and maybe even struggling congregations instead of joining the large church across town or, if you are a church planter, starting from scratch in the school auditorium next door.
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Loving Questions for Pastors of Seeker-Sensitive Churches #2
Which came first: the seeker-sensitive service philosophy or a commitment to sound biblical exposition? Consider this testimony by a prominent pastor of a large seeker-sensitive church about the early days of his ministry:
By January 1976 it had become evident that the core believers, who were working so hard and giving out so much, desperately needed deeper Bible teaching and corporate worship. So we started the New Community, our midweek believers service.
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Loving Questions for Pastors of Seeker-Sensitive Churches #4
Will the seeker-sensitive model ultimately be unable to keep up with the culture? What follows is a very important statement in one pastor’s account of his seeker-sensitive church:
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