Nine Marks of a Healthy Church Mark 8: Concern for Discipleship The American Church is obsessed with growth. Notable Christian authors and perceived leaders like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels initially rose to prominence because of their writings on church growth. Furthermore, credibility is often established on the grounds of how big one’s church or [...]

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church Church Discipline Foundational Passage: 1 Corinthians 5 We must practice church discipline because… 1. It is shameful for a Christian to live in sin (vs. 1-2) Admittedly, this is a particularly scandalous sin – Paul says that it is “a kind [of sin] that is not tolerated even among [...]

The issue of issue of exactly how women are able and commanded to serve the church is one that has been coming up in my conversations more and more. I’m sure this is the product of a culture that is increasingly agitated over anything resembling gender distinction. Even more, the Christian Egalitarian/Complimentarian debate is in [...]

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church Church Discipline Foundational Passage: Matthew 18 1. A Kingdom Context This chapter is housed in the midst of Jesus’ instructions regarding the Kingdom. This, as surprising as it may seem to some, is a perfectly reasonable frame from which to understand church discipline. This chapter discusses the Kingdom of [...]

It’s been gone awhile but it’s back – David’s Links makes it’s triumphant return to the old blog. —————————————————- Rolling Stones: Teens of Christian Rock I’m not one to go off about how pagan Christian teen music culture has gotten. Still, this review from a secular perspective doesn’t exactly paint the picture we want to [...]

I took the Christian Classics Ethereal Library‘s version of John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ with me to work today (thanks Steve).In the course of the reading I found a nugget I thought I’d share. While I don’t agree with the thrust of the entire work I did find the [...]

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church Church Membership Two essential elements of a healthy church membership: 1. Confession and Covenant What makes one church different from another? Surely it is more than just physical location. If that were not the case we wouldn’t see 1 church per mile on any given stretch of road. The [...]