Book Review: Dallas and the Spitfire
Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson
It’s easy for “discipleship” and “discipling” to be mere buzzwords, labels we slap on things to make them sound spiritual. And if our churches move beyond buzzwords and try to create a culture of one-on-one discipling, it’s easy to turn even that into just one more program. Weekly meeting at Starbucks—check. Reading the Bible or a Christian book together—check. Talking about the same two or three struggles with sin every week—check.
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The Great Commission Is Bigger than Your Church
The great commission is bigger than your local church. How should that shape your priorities and posture as a pastor?
THE GREAT COMMISSION IS BIGGER THAN YOUR CHURCH
Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity, and teaching them to obey everything he commanded (Matt. 28:19). And he promised to be with them to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). This charge is global in scope. Therefore, the great commission necessarily involves more than one local church.
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Wanted: Apostolic Pastors
Editor's Note: Bobby Jamieson9Marks is on the lookout for apostolic pastors. Know any?
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Book Review: Revival and Revivalism
Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson
“How did we get here?” is a question that is always relevant and often illuminating. Yet contemporary evangelicals don’t ask it as often as we should.
In his book Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858, Iain Murray tells a story that helps explain how evangelicals—Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and more—got to where we are today.
FROM REVIVAL…
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Book Review: Being Conformed to Christ in Community
Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson
There aren’t many doctoral dissertations which are directly relevant to the work of pastoral ministry. This review, however, is about one of them: Jim Samra’s book Being Conformed to Christ in Community, which is the published version of his 2004 Oxford DPhil thesis.
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The Advantages of Curriculum
One of the perennial challenges a pastor faces regarding Sunday school is the question of what to teach. That question is relevant not just to the week-by-week routine, but also to the longer-term life of the church. But whatever the long-term strategy, the question of what to teach every week is an acute one.
My simple goal in this article is to point out the potential advantages of using curriculum in your church’s adult Sunday school.
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Book Review: Renovation of the Church
Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson
The seeker-sensitive ethos is alive and well in evangelical circles. This ethos assumes that the primary purpose of the church’s weekly gathering is to attract non-Christians. It holds that the substance and style of corporate worship should conform as closely as possible to non-Christians’ preferences. And it treats numerical growth in attendance as an absolute metric of success. This ethos still governs the operating systems of many churches, even some whose reformed theological convictions might seem to imply a different ministry philosophy.
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The Bible’s Burden for Church Revitalization
Throughout much of the United States (and a few other parts of the world) evangelical churches quite literally litter the landscape.
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Book Review: Heralds of the King
Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson
Thankfully, the current upswing of evangelical interest in Christ-centered preaching shows no signs of abating. If anything, it seems that with each passing year, more and more pastors and scholars are reckoning with the fact that Scripture itself testifies that the whole Bible points to Jesus (Jn. 5:39, Lk. 24:44-47).
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Book Review: Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs
Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson
During the past thirty five years, few people have shaped evangelicals’ vision for the church as decisively as Bill Hybels.
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