Six Ways to Give Your People False Assurance
As a pastor, I interact with a lot of people who struggle to have confidence in the authenticity of their conversion. To their mind, their sin clings closely and their failings are always at hand. Most of the time, I find that these are faithful brothers and sisters who need comfort and reassurance.
Read more >
The Pros and Cons of Planting and Revitalizing
Church planting is in vogue today, and that is a trend for which I am grateful to God. But statistics indicate that thousands of churches go out of existence every year in America. Far more churches flounder with declining attendance and inadequate leadership. In some cases, it may be more strategic for church planters to invest their time and resources in revitalizing these existing congregations.
Read more >
Implementing Membership in a Church Plant
It’s hard to know when and how a church plant should establish a formal membership.
At their inception, most church plants are not able to act as fully functioning congregations. In the absence of formal church membership, the church cannot exercise church discipline or administer the Lord’s Supper or baptism in a biblical way. So planters should feel a burden to establish membership as soon as it’s doable.
But what does it look like to move from a start-up to a congregation with membership?
Read more >
Book Review: The Radical Reformission & Confessions of a Reformission Rev
Reviewed by Michael McKinley
Much ink has been spilled lately describing, advocating, criticizing, and defending the emerging church movement. Rightly so. It is a challenge that evangelicals need to handle well if they want to move into the next era of church life in a healthy way.
Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and founder of the Acts 29 network, is a unique voice in the conversation. He was a part of the emerging movement at its beginning, and he now stands as one of its most visible figures and one of its most passionate critics.
Reviewed only
Read more >
Book Review: The Market-Driven Church
Reviewed by Michael McKinley
There’s a certain genre of Christian writing that seeks to analyze the problems with American culture from the perspective of a friendly outsider and then observe the way the church has embraced or reflected those problems, like Os Guinness’ Fit Bodies, Fat Minds or David Wells’ No Place For Truth. Udo Middleman’s The Market-Driven Church fits more or less into this category.
Reviewed only
Read more >
Book Review: I Sold My Soul On eBay
Reviewed by Michael McKinley
THE SETTING
Atheists are all the rage these days. Sam Harris followed up his 2004 book The End of Faith with 2006’s Letter to a Christian Nation. Later that year, Richard Dawkins made a splash with his The God Delusion. In 2007, Christopher Hitchens did the talk show circuit in order to promote his God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Each of these three books were written by highly intelligent men who were clearly happy to position themselves as the enemies of organized religion.
Reviewed only
Read more >
Church Membership and the NCLHGA
What a Biblical Understanding of Church Membership and the NCLHGA Have in Common
In our previous article, we traced the theme of inclusion and exclusion throughout redemptive history. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem, God promises to create a people for himself. This new people should be distinct from the rest of the world, both in their confession and in their conduct. Ultimately, we concluded that church membership was consistent with how God has worked through redemption history.
Read more >
Church Membership in a World Without NASCAR
In our previous two articles on the topic of church membership, we saw the biblical support for the modern practice of local church membership. In this article, we will look at how some of our spiritual fathers thought about church membership.
Read more >
