SBC26 9Marks at 9: The State of the SBC
Our second night of 9Marks at 9 with our usual State of the SBC panel with Al Mohler, Jason Allen, [...]
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Our second night of 9Marks at 9 with our usual State of the SBC panel with Al Mohler, Jason Allen, [...]
Watch
How old should a child be before I baptize them? Is it okay to baptize people who aren’t joining my church’s membership? Should the Lord’s Supper be limited only to members of my church? Can the Lord’s Supper be taken during small group meetings or Bible studies?
Once pastors and church leaders redefine their plant as a church, their ministry will begin to align with Jesus’s mission to shepherd the flock and bring glory to God alone.
A healthy church plant is not measured by size, speed, or level of self-sufficiency but by good pastoring that produces faith, fruit, and a flourishing community.
In Planting by Pastoring, author Nathan Knight challenges our view of church planting and centers the goal of pastoral ministry on a basic biblical foundation: a church plant is in fact a church, and a planter is in fact a pastor.
As churches rapidly expand, Christians risk viewing the church with an entrepreneurial mindset. Church planters can be tempted to fixate on gaining numbers and achieving financial stability as their only metrics for success. They fail to focus on lifting up Christ’s people within the church.
Discussing the book "Discipling" with the author Mark Dever. If you are a follower of Jesus but are not helping others follow Jesus, what does it mean that you follow Jesus? In this third 9Marks Book Club, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever discuss the important topic of discipling in a local church.
What kind of leadership does a healthy church have? Is it a congregation that strives to ensure that the gospel is faithfully preached? Yes. Is it deacons who model service in the affairs of the church? Yes. But the Bible presents one more leadership gift to churches to help them become healthy: the position of elder or pastor, two words used interchangeably in the New Testament.
Healthy churches have a pervasive concern for church growth as growth is prescribed in the Bible. That means growing members, not just numbers.
A temple has bricks. A flock has sheep. A vine has branches. And a body has members. Being a Christian means being joined to a church.
Understanding conversion rightly fuels evangelism, provides security, and emboldens courage built on the never-failing work of God. Or at least it does in healthy churches. The problem is that many Christians have difficulty in articulating what it means for them to be a Christian and are therefore paralyzed when it comes to sharing the gospel with another person.
If you read the Bible, how do you read the Bible? Do you simply drop it on the floor and let it open to whatever page it happens to and read from there? Do you read it systematically, from beginning to end? Do you tend to focus on your favorite passages to the neglect of others?
This sessions comes from a course called "Church Essentials" 9Marks created with Lifeway in 2012.