All the saints of a healthy church bear the burden of ministry, and all saints of a local church should give sacrificially of their time, talent, and treasures. And brothers and sisters, we give sacrificially of our time, talent, and treasure because we belong to God and because we are motivated by grace. 2 Corinthians 8:1-7:We want you to know,…
Category: Church
Healthy Churches Know They are Not Alone
A healthy church knows they are not God’s only gathering of Christians in their community. Brothers and sisters, in 500 years when people look back on us today, what will they see that we could not see? What are the egregious mistakes we’re making that we don’t know we’re making? What are our blind spots? I can’t really know. Here,…
Leadership in the Local Church
Servant leadership should mark the leaders of the church. Let’s look at Titus 1 to see this principle in action. Here we find one of a few lists of qualifications for the office of overseer/pastor/elder – the office charged with overseeing the congregation, caring for the people of God, and equipping them for the mission of God. The Apostle Paul…
On Why and How We Believe: A Pastoral Reflection
Why do we believe the things we believe? We are tempted to believe things the people we look up to believe. We are tempted to believe things our culture tells us to believe. We are tempted to believe things that are easy to believe. We are tempted to believe things we want to believe. We are tempted to believe things…
Healthy Churches Share Ministry
Healthy churches are not all about one person or one group of people. Healthy churches don’t merely gather to consume the content of gifted speakers or listen to gifted musicians. They understand that the pastor or team of pastors exist not to perform for them, but to equip them to do the work of ministry. To be clear: the ministry…
Characteristics of Healthy Churches: Membership
To be fair, if you flip through the Bible, you will not find a single verse that says, “Thou shalt join a church.” But that’s not how we do theology. The BIble is not a giant fact book that we just directly pluck verse from without any context from the passage the verse is embedded in. Here, in the Word,…
Characteristics of Healthy Churches: Gathering for Worship
We’re not a business, or club, or friend group per se – we are the body of Christ and family of God in the world. Healthy local bodies have six common characteristics, and today we’re going to talk about the first one. Healthy churches gather regularly for worship. But why do we gather? First, we gather because it’s commanded. Because…
Healthy Churches Know What They Are
The Body of Christ 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 1…