The Church

How does God’s grace affect change in people? I don’t know for sure, but sometimes I wonder if our mental picture of God’s grace is something that is soft, warm, and cuddly. If grace was personified it would be that newborn baby in the hospital nursery swaddled while everybody on the other side of the glass…

Jonah is a biographical account of a man who is deeply religious, but far from God. This book gives the reader various aspects to a life that is religious, but spiritually dysfunctional. In chapter 1, we discover one aspect to a dysfunctionally religious person. Like Jonah, people like this have a category in their heads…

A church’s culture will be shaped by the beliefs and convictions the people in that church have. Some of our beliefs are known to us, but some aren’t, at least not immediately. Why? We hold to beliefs and convictions that lie underneath the surface and we may not even be aware of them. It’s those beliefs…

The first definition of the gospel I taught my kids was: Jesus died for our sins. When looking at those five words with adult eyes, you realize that short statement begs more questions. So what is the gospel? This is where historical theology (i.e. what Christians in different ages believed about the Bible) can be…

The church world is the only world I’ve ever known. My dad is a pastor. I have an uncle and a cousin who are pastors. I’m a pastor. In growing up in the church there are numerous realities one notices. Perhaps the most visible is this: people come and people go. People leave other churches…

Ray Ortlund Jr. once posted a provocative blog entitled, “One Anothers I Can’t Find in the New Testament.” His list is both somewhat amusing and gut-wrenching: How often are we Christians really good at doing these “one anothers”? I know. It’s sad. But if the church is going to be a harbinger of the new heavens and the new…

Almost any genuine Bible-believing Christian will be able to articulate we are saved by grace not through our works. Salvation by grace is a uniqueness to Christianity not seen in any other world religion or philosophy. But in many instances the Christian church is missing something: we love our doctrine of grace, but we can be horrible…

I’m in a blog series trying to make the case what a church ought to provide its people is: lots of gospel, lots of safety, and lots of time. Today I want to hone in on the necessity of the gospel being central in the life of a church. A lot of people think the gospel is the…

In my previous post, I made the case that the church is meant to be a harbinger of the new heavens and the new earth. That is, when people experience the community of people called ‘the church’ they should be given a taste of the new heavens and the new earth. In order for that to…