Raising Up Elders: Three Areas to Address
Like most church planters, I was concerned about church growth from the beginning. While the size of the congregation is not the most important thing about a church—and it’s not nearly as important as most of us assume it is—there is nothing quite like preaching to eleven people on a Sunday morning to motivate you to go out and find more people.
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We Need to Be Careful, but We also Need to Care
Mercy ministry can be dangerous for the health of a church.
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How Mercy Serves Evangelism in the Church
Many American churches have separated mercy and evangelism.
Some congregations think that showing kindness to those in need is a good thing in its own right, and Christians should not feel compelled to evangelize in order to legitimize their deeds of mercy. In fact, some would go so far as to say that using mercy as a doorway to evangelism is disingenuous.
Other congregations rightly believe that evangelism is the most important act of mercy that we could possibly undertake for our neighbor, but they wrongly conclude that other kinds of mercy are optional or unnecessary.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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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
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