As we prepare to worship God tomorrow, it may do us good to pause for just a few moments to consider the local church. What is the church? Why has God called us into these little communities? Does the local church really matter? It does! The local church is foundational to God’s plan for his…
I once paid a visit to one of the most mega of America’s megachurches. It’s a church whose pastor is well-known, a church known for its innovation, a church held up as a model for modern evangelicalism. I went in with as open a mind as I could muster. I left perplexed. I was perplexed…
We all know there are times and circumstances in which the only right course of action is to leave a church. If the church leadership has apostatized or proven themselves unqualified for ministry, if they are preaching a false gospel, if they have surrendered to the culture, we need to get out. We can leave…
It’s probably a silly idea. It’s probably the kind of thing we came up with late on a Friday afternoon and laughed about before realizing, “Actually, maybe there’s something to this.” Somehow it became a bit of a tradition for Grace Fellowship Church and, even better, one we rather enjoy. We call it “Name Amnesty…
One matter of continual concern to me is interpersonal conflict within the church. It’s not the existence or even the quantity of conflict, but the inability or unwillingness to deal with it when it arises, and this despite the Bible’s clear teaching that Christians are to resolve conflict and how Christians are to resolve conflict.…
I love my church. I love the people I gather with week-by-week. They are fun and safe and easy to be with. But who said church should be safe and easy? What if one of the marks of a good church, a blessed church, is that it’s a messy church? I’m sure you know of…
One of my favorite parts of vacation is visiting new churches, sometimes close by and sometimes far away. I enjoy meeting new people, of course, and experiencing Christian fellowship with them. But I also love seeing how other churches worship—what songs they sing, how they structure their services, how they read and pray, how they…
There are some subjects we make out to be far more difficult than they really are or than they really need to be. Often they appear difficult because we define them in difficult ways or because we fail to define them at all. “Discipling” can suffer in these ways. Perhaps it helps, then, to define…
For many years now I have told you about the excellent series of videos called Dispatches from the Front. These videos follow Tim Keesee as he travels the world to discover and document all kinds of gospel advance. In past episodes he has traveled through Eastern Europe, North Africa, China, India, and just about everywhere…
Yesterday I began to share some thoughts on diversity and uniformity within this Reformed resurgence. I concluded by asking why there appears to be such a distance between our desire for diversity and the reality as we observe it at our big conferences. There are many possibilities that would be worth exploring, but today I…
There have been times in the life of Grace Fellowship Church when we have endured some bad sermons. You could even say that in these seasons we purposely endured bad sermons. We heard men preach texts that were clearly beyond their ability to understand and explain. We heard men preach with all the fire of…
This morning, all across the world, thousands of ordinary pastors will preach ordinary sermons to ordinary people, and through these sermons they will communicate the most powerful, extraordinary news of all. This news will slowly but definitely make its mark on these people, conforming them ever more to the image of Christ. These congregations will…
I do it three times every week: Every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening, and every Wednesday evening I walk into church. Sometimes I walk into church eager and full of expectation; sometimes I walk into church grudgingly and grumpy; sometimes I walk into church sick or sorrowful. But week after week I do it. And…
I love America and I love Americans. Some would say it is my duty, as a Canadian, to hold a grudge against America and its people. But I can’t help myself. I have traveled to most of the states, I have visited most of the key cities, and I have spent time in many of…
Can you imagine your life without worship? Can you imagine your life without regularly gathering with God’s people to worship him together? Corporate worship is one of the great privileges of the Christian life. And perhaps it is one of those privileges that over time we can take for granted. When I pause to think…
Who would have guessed that introversion would become such a popular subject? Who would have guessed it would even carry a book to the New York Times list of bestsellers in Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking? Her book brought into the public eye a personality type…
It is ironic that music, an element meant to draw Christians together in mutual love and service (see Colossians 3:16) has become a force for significant division within the church. It just goes to show, I guess, that we can make a mess of pretty much anything. In their book The Compelling Community, Mark Dever…
I am sure you have considered God’s command in 1 Corinthians 11:28: “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” It sounds simple enough, but what is actually involved in this kind of self-examination? How should we prepare ourselves before celebrating the Lord’s supper? Thomas Haweis…
A couple of days ago Aileen and I were at the gym, alternating between lifting heavy stuff off the floor and then putting it right back down again (with a bit of running to nowhere in the mix as well). This kind of activity often leaves us rather sore, and, as it happens, there was…
If the number of highlights in a book can serve as an indication of its worth, then The Compelling Community has already proven an especially valuable one to me. It is littered with notes and highlights (or the Kindle equivalent, at least) and many of its ideas and applications are still percolating somewhere in the…