How church history will help you defend the faith

Who better to make this case than Michael Haykin?

What “able to teach” means and doesn’t mean

The 9 Marks journal is out. Here is one of the helpful articles from it on what the qualification, ‘able to teach’ actually means when assessing people for eldership posts.

Pastors, covid and criticism

‘Criticism is one of the main things which could damage your elders’ and pastors’ capacity to lead at this very moment, and that could imperil their tranquility of mind. Criticism could significantly throw their sense of direction, and dent their confidence as they try, under God, to lead into territory where no one has gone before. There are two main areas of criticism which are likely to rear their heads in coming days, and in this post I want to analyse why these might be a temptation for church members to indulge and engage with, and why these represent a hammer blow to the predicament that elderships find themselves in.’

Inter-faith prayers for the pandemic to cease. What is at stake is greater than you think.

Leonardo De Chirico: ‘ Can you imagine an Apostle Paul who, at the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17), invites his listeners (followers of various philosophical schools and ancient cults) to unite in prayer, each to his own god/ideal as a sign of fraternity?’ Not really, can you?

You’re not alone in the cave

As one who went into lock down suffering the ill-effects of another depressive episode (it’s lifted now, thanks for asking!) this is a good one.

Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man

If you wonder what is generally going on in the latter half of the book of Daniel, you’re not alone. But Chapter 7 helps us to make ultimate sense of the rest. Keith Mathison fills in some of the details as to what is going on.

From the archive: What is ‘gospel work’ and what is ‘the gospel’?

‘When we are talking about planting churches and doing gospel work in an area, we need to be clear on what we are talking about. If there is no active proclamation of the gospel and there is no effort by the church to do as Christ commanded and take the gospel out to the world – a functional hyper-Calvinism or an ingrained apathy with a hand-waving justification that God is sovereign – then we can rightly say there is no gospel work in that area and to suggest a church plant would seem entirely right.’