The current Discipleship Seminar - entitled Invest to Invite the Next Generation of Disciple Makers - taking place at the Council of Churches of Malaysia (CCM), is for clergy and laity who have been selected to be pioneers as disciple makers. The group of about 30 includes is mostly from the ecumenical family within Malaysia, plus one delegate from Hong Kong.
Read moreAs a member of Redeemer, Ullman helped hunt for a new church building in the winter of 2012, and now Redeemer has bought the former Trinity Presbyterian Church in Brainerd for $270,000, according to Hamilton County records. The congregation is busy this month beautifying the building with some construction projects, and worship services are scheduled in September.
Read moreBut then there are the people. See if this poem rings true:
To dwell above
with those we love
Ah, that will be glory!
To dwell below
with those we know,
Now that’s a different story!*
Now, church is more than a body that engages its community. It should have certain biblical marks and should be focused on eternal purposes. However, it must also must take the faith it believes and live it out in context.
Church Should Impact the Community
Read moreNow: what have my actions preached to him? They have preached that Christians are people who do good things for their neighbour. They have preached that niceness, and kindness, and morally upright behaviour are what make you a Christian. In short, they have preached justification by works.
Your works have indeed “preached” something. But it isn’t the gospel.
Read more“You would think it was Anglican,” Collier said. “I know this is a little odd in the Baptist world.”
A little, but increasingly less so, according to experts on Baptist polity and worship practices.
While being contemplative and having an intense focus on the sacrament of communion are not necessarily the same, a growing number of Baptist churches are exploring elements of both in an era when Christians and “nones” are rejecting highly produced, modern worship experiences.
Read moreI think many liberal Christians, but certainly not all, would agree with me that the Church exists to mix things up a bit. She is not in the business of making anyone feel comfortable. However, it is true of revolutionary movements everywhere, that there is always lurking in the background some ‘committee of public safety’ deciding which establishments we are to mix up and which we are to keep.
Read moreThis water baptism was performed in 2013 by the pastors of Bread of Life Christian Church (Rogersville, Missouri), a growing Slavic congregation affiliated with the Assemblies of God.
But church leaders, vocational and lay alike, became program averse. So they slowly began eliminating outreach programs in their churches. I understand why this development took place. The programs seemed ineffective, not culturally relevant, and often cumbersome to lead and implement.
The problem, however, is that nothing replaced the programs. And the mild culture of outreach in churches was replaced with no culture of outreach.
Read moreAll three speakers granted that some kind of reunion with Rome (and with Orthodoxy) must be eventual goals for Protestantism, which could not think of itself as the sole bearer of the church’s future. All three insisted therefore that Protestantism should be characterized more by its positive witness than by a negative self-definition over against its enemies.
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