On The Limits Of Winsomeness

And I started to recognize another danger to this approach: If we assume that winsomeness will gain a favorable hearing, when Christians consistently receive heated pushback, we will be tempted to think our convictions are the problem. If winsomeness is met with . . . Continue reading →

The Next Church-Growth Fad: Big Data

One of the several quiet revolutions introduced into American life by the two Obama Administrations was the use of “Big Data” to target voters. To that point no campaign had harnessed the power of the internet the way the Obama campaign had. . . . Continue reading →

Straight Talk About Homophobia

In just a few short years the noun Homophobia has become one of the most powerful words in the English language. It has an interesting, if brief, history. It was derived from the combination of two Greek loan words brought into English, . . . Continue reading →

Mass Anesthesia: Self-Medicating Our Deconstructed Souls

Americans have always been restless. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants and once those immigrants arrived here they kept moving. The impulse to move and to keep moving is driven by dissatisfaction. Sometimes it has been dissatisfaction with the religious . . . Continue reading →

Seeker, Franchise, Or Reforming: Moving Beyond Some Current Models In Reformed Church Planting To Recover The Whole Mission

The need is great, the mission is great but our God is greater and his grace is greater than all our sin and weakness. Pray for the harvest. Organize for the mission (to plant churches) and ask yourself where your congregation falls in the seeker — franchise — reforming continuum: is there a passion for the whole mission? Continue reading →

A New Reformed Congregation In Ventura, CA

I am thankful to introduce Ventura Reformed to readers of the Heidelblog! In April, Pasadena URC called and sent me to three households in the city of Ventura to lead them in a grassroots church-planting project. We are asking the Lord to establish a URCNA congregation on the Oxnard Plain (population ~ 400,000) not only with Reformed-and-relocating people, and with Christians-becoming-Reformed people, but especially—especially!—with people who do not attend any church. Continue reading →

Thinking Of Planting A Confessional Reformed Church On The Plains?

It is not easy to plant a confessional Reformed congregation on the American Plains (the area of the USA from the between the Rockies and the Mississippi River, from Canada to Mexico). In some places it is sparsely populated. The confessional Presbyterian . . . Continue reading →

Two Big Events In The Life Of A New Confessional Reformed Congregation

In Matthew 28:18–20 our Lord gave a mission to the visible, institutional church: preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, and make disciples. He did not give that mission to a million evangelical para-church organizations. He gave it to the visible church. The . . . Continue reading →

Talking With Unbelievers: Conversation Not Conversion

“Reformed evangelism.” I used to think this was an oxymoron, that Arminians ask people to choose, and that Calvinists let the Arminians do the work of the evangelists. I thought that the Calvinists would teach converts the doctrines of the faith once . . . Continue reading →