Postcards from Palookaville

In this final post in the series, I want to offer some brief, practical guidelines on how to help keep a church on the rails. Each could be a post in itself, but I have no wish to try your patience further. So, for what they are worth, here they are: 1. Guard your personal integrity and be honest...

Because the Christian church in Britain will obviously never have to deal with ministries like this .

Because the Christian church in Britain will obviously never have to deal with ministries like this .

In my last two posts, I have tried to suggest that the reasons for a church's decline into liberalism are not always immediately doctrinal, but can actually arise out of a culture; and, by implication, the underlying story I am trying to tell is that sometimes (oftentimes?) churches go liberal...

In my last two posts, I have tried to suggest that the reasons for a church's decline into liberalism are not always immediately doctrinal, but can actually arise out of a culture; and, by implication, the underlying story I am trying to tell is that sometimes (oftentimes?) churches go liberal...

Yesterday, I noted how the big personality can shift the church in the wrong direction. A closely related phenomenon is that of the minister who thumbs his nose at the church's public standards of doctrine and practice, who decides that he does not like that to which his vows bind him, and that he...

Yesterday, I noted how the big personality can shift the church in the wrong direction. A closely related phenomenon is that of the minister who thumbs his nose at the church's public standards of doctrine and practice, who decides that he does not like that to which his vows bind him, and that he...

Not all historical phenomena that manifest themselves as doctrinal are necessarily immediately doctrinal in cause or origin.' That statement, made to me by a mentor in my field of historical theology, articulates a crucial principle, a principle that came to mind quite recently. I have spent the...

Not all historical phenomena that manifest themselves as doctrinal are necessarily immediately doctrinal in cause or origin.' That statement, made to me by a mentor in my field of historical theology, articulates a crucial principle, a principle that came to mind quite recently. I have spent the...

The shadowy figure known simply as `The Librarian' brought to my attention the following thoughts of the Scottish theologian and churchman, Thomas Chalmers, on Romans 13. In an era when it is seemingly more and more acceptable to be a social gospeller, to identify Christianity with political...