We Always Have Something Good to Say
Among scores of interviews I’ve conducted over the years, one simple statement from counselor Ed Welch may be the single most memorable.
Co-vocational Church Planting: Rethinking vocation
The idea of rethinking vocation must start with considering the sacred/secular divide, or what some people refer to as the problem of dualism. Dualism, simply put, is wrongly dividing something that should not be divided. The Greco-Roman thought was that the world is divided into two competing domains: the sacred (spiritual) and the secular (material). Such a worldview tends to assume that the spiritual is the higher realm, and the secular, or material world, is lacking of deep meaning.
How Sharing the Gospel in Our Secular Age Is Different
We all know, if not sense, that our culture has rapidly changed in the last few decades. How is sharing the gospel in our culture different today? What challenges do we face? What opportunities do we have?
10 Things Positive Pastors Do
I have pastor friends who are continually positive, and I love being with them. Here are some of the characteristics that mark them:
J.D. Greear on Keys to Sharing the Gospel with Muslims
Watch and listen as J.D Greear shares about “Keys to Sharing the Gospel with Muslims.”
What Does a Church Really Need to Multiply?
Clint Clifton, Send City Missionary for Washington D.C., explains the necessary components for churches to multiply.
It Costs to Reach Your Community, and It’s Worth It
There are tens of thousands of churches in America that haven’t baptized anyone in at least a year. Even though The Great Commission and The Great Commandments are core to who we are as the church, we’re struggling to engage our culture with the Gospel.
How to Talk to Jehovah’s Witnesses About Jesus
If a Muslim or a Jehovah’s Witness, both of whom are Arians, say, “You’ve got this translation wrong. It really shouldn’t say ‘the Word was God.’ It should say, ‘the Word was God-like or a god or a great prophet, a great angel, and then God used him for great things,’” you can know that’s not true just because of John 1:3. You can show them this.
Church Planting: A Shaping Matter
The house is under contract, there are packing boxes everywhere, the moving truck is booked and it’s all coming together now. I’m planting a church – New City Church in Bath, Maine, to be exact. My family, together as a team, is planting a church and we see God’s fingerprints all over it. This does not mean we’re now living the perfect dream; it just means that, as this mission unfolds before us with all the inevitable curve balls and trials, we are focusing on Jesus. Or at least we’re trying to anyway. We are remembering His past faithfulness and mercy in our lives, and we’re hoping in that very same faithfulness for the shaping of our future.
How to Recapture the Joy of Awe
“The world will never starve for want of wonders, only for want of wonder,” G. K. Chesterton lamented a century ago. Things haven’t gotten better since. If anything, it’s easier for Christians today to have a well-versed knowledge of Scripture but an empty and hollow experiential reality. While it’s easy to criticize secular culture for its godlessness, we as believers are often unaware of how this disenchantment has seeped into our own lives and churches.
