What’s in a Name?
Names have always been important. There’s a reason why “Judas” never tops the list of most popular baby names in any given year. When my wife and I were trying to pick out names for our children, we always had…
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Moving Prayer to the Center of Ministry
God’s people need to be prayed for. They need to led in prayer. They need to be taught how to pray. We all believe that prayer is important. Nevertheless, working our convictions about prayer into our practice of ministry is…
The Biblical Basis for the Spirituality of the Church
Last week I posted a piece suggesting three principles by which the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) may respond to the call to confess racist tendencies in the years leading up to its founding. One of these principles was to…
Buckets and Burning Churches: Luther, the Church, and Catholicity
In his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation of 1520, Luther takes aim at the Roman Church’s “flimsy and worthless” claim to possess the exclusive authority and ability (by virtue of some unique spiritual gift) to interpret…
Three Things I Love About an Ordination Service
During a recent evening worship service at our church, the Rev. Scott Cook was ordained to the gospel ministry. Scott is a recent graduation of RTS (Charlotte) and had previously been an outstanding intern at our church. I had the…
The World in the Church 3: Irreligious World, Irreligious Church?
My first article began with the observation that Satan ambitiously aims to attack the church at the very points that are intended by God for its defence. He seeks to bring the world into the church through its elders, and…
The World in the Church 3: Irreligious World, Irreligious Church?
My first article began with the observation that Satan ambitiously aims to attack the church at the very points that are intended by God for its defence. He seeks to bring the world into the church through its elders, and…
The Church in the World
If we’re awake, we will have a keen sense of the powerful undertow of a culture that has discarded almost every reference to, or value of, Jesus Christ. To the world, the church is too often considered an obsolete community…
Cyril of Jerusalem, Ron Swanson, and the catholicity of the church
In the Nicene Creed we confess that the church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” Of these four marks, the third mark–the catholicity of the church–is probably the most susceptible to misunderstanding among evangelical Protestants. The catholicity of the church,…
The World in the Church: A Distracted World, a Distracted Church?
How does the world get inside the church? The prince of this world is not modest in his schemes or unambitious in his aspirations: his attack on the Son of God reveals the insane over-reach of his pride. Sometimes he…