One of the most interesting and troubling things I’ve found about myself and my church (any of the churches of which I’ve been a member!) is the number of things we know we should do and even decide we will do, but which never get done. Seven Marks of a New Testament Church is certainly…
Well, I didn’t do it alone, but I don’t think I can plead completely “not guilty.” Tonight at 7 pm (about a half hour from when I’m posting this), I’ll be interviewing Lee Wyatt, author of the new book The Incredible Shrinking Gospel. Join me! Google+ Event page. Or watch live on YouTube:
(This continues a series that started here, and continues with part 2, part 3, and part 4.) The second mark of a New Testament church according to Dr. David Alan Black is Christian baptism. He explains why he explicitly uses the term “Christian” with baptism. There’s a distinction there that’s important and Dave discusses it….
(This continues a series that started here, and continues with part 2 and part 3.) Dave’s first mark of a New Testament church is evangelistic preaching. (Book: Seven Marks of a New Testament Church.) I’m a member of a church that’s part of a mainline denomination. I’m a mainliner. In general, we don’t like the…
I will be putting more material from Bruce Epperly in as I post more on the church, but here’s an exercise he suggests in his book Transforming Acts, pp. 19-20. Acts of the Apostles is clear that doctrines are symbiotically related to behavior. Our doctrines emerge from spirit-centered experiences. Our experiences are clarified by our…
Well, my prospective, perhaps presumptive garden, that is. One of the important elements to understanding stories in the Bible, parables included, is our perspective. In Christian circles, when we hear “the sower went forth to sow,” (Matthew 13:3), or perhaps “a farmer went out to sow his seed,” we generally see ourselves in the role…
Before I dig into this series organized around Dave Black’s book Seven Marks of a New Testament Church, I want to make a couple of off-the-cuff remarks. Over the last few years I’ve come to believe that we have two key elements that need to be changed, but more fundamentally, we keep talking about the…
9 Reasons Why Sinners Went to Jesus but Don’t Come to Us.
Pastors and church leaders cringe at the “s” word, because so many members don’t want to hear about it. Sometimes they blame the members for not wanting to dedicate their wallets to the Lord. But is that precisely what we should be asking church members to do? I think the resources to carry out the…
I just extracted a post from Dave Black’s blog and put it on The Jesus Paradigm. For those unacquainted with Dave’s blog, I do this so that I can get a permanent link, and I have his permission to do so. Dave asks some important questions. How do our values impact the way that we…