As I argued at the WSC faculty conference “Missional and Reformed” the Reformed Churches have a sense of “mission.” We haven’t always been faithful to it and the Reformed understanding of the church’s mission is not that of the “missional” movement, especially . . . Continue reading →
Witness to the Faith and Our Faith
Julius Kim on Witness
Julius Kim gave a conference at Reformed Presbyterian (PCA) in Bowie, MD, Justin Taylor has the audio links. Julius spoke on the motivation and mandate, to witness, the message of our witness, and the mark of our witness.
One Reason Why Unbelievers Don’t Want to Talk to Us
Mark Vander Pol recently pointed us to a wiki page titled, “How to Avoid Uncomfortable Conversations About Religion.” This page is useful on a variety of levels. On the most common level, some people are pests and it offers some good advice for dealing . . . Continue reading →
Boston: Ministers Are Fishers Of Men
III. Ministers are fishers by office; they are catchers of the souls of men, sent “to open the eyes of the blind, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God,” Acts 26:18. Preachers of . . . Continue reading →
Dining With Sinners
And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax . . . Continue reading →
Heidelberg 86: Why Good Works? (4)
Evangelism properly is what the minister does in the pulpit when he proclaims the gospel to the world but each of us as Christians is a witness or gives witness to the faith (the objective facts of redemptive history and the basic truths of Scripture summarized in the creeds) and to our faith, i.e., to our personal appropriation of Christ by grace alone, through faith alone. Continue reading →
Spiritual Weapons For A Spiritual Battle
The radicalization of the vulnerable is a sobering reality. Guilt, shame, and the longing for lost innocence can make people do the most terrible things—as long as salvation awaits on the other side. Whether it’s drinking Kool-Aid or strapping on a suicide . . . Continue reading →
Are Denominations A Scandal?
Comes the question, Has the splintering of the Protestant church into thousands of denominations become a hindrance to our witness to the world? What can we do? This is an important question that we may not dismiss. Our Lord warned the visible . . . Continue reading →
AGR: What a Blind Man Can Teach Christians About Witnessing (with Mike Abendroth)
John 9 is one of my favorite places in Scripture from which to think about witness. There are few topics that most Christians dread more than witness but they dread it, in part, because they are afraid that questions will arise that . . . 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 →
What Should We Think When An Evangelistic Crusade Comes To Town?
A correspondent wrote to ask for help thinking through how to respond to the arrival of a large evangelistic event in his town. This is my reply slightly revised for the HB. Continue reading →
Some Reasons Why Visitors Do Not Stay And What To Do About It
Presbyterian and Reformed congregations occupy an odd space in American Christianity. We do not really belong to American Christianity in significant ways. Our roots are not in the nineteenth-century revivals nor even in the eighteenth-century revivals. We are no part of the . . . Continue reading →
Who Shared The Gospel With You?
Editor’s note: Earlier this summer I had the opportunity to reconnect with Bob, the Christian layman who first shared the gospel with me in 1976, while I was spending part of one day at week at an elementary school near my high . . . 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 →
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 →
“Who Do You Say That I Am?” (Mark 8:27–30)
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 →
Heidelminicast: We Believe In The Free, Well-Meant Offer Of The Gospel
The Reformed churches confess the well-meant and free-offer of the gospel. Continue reading →
“Bait And Switch” Is Not Evangelism
Post-Christian Sex
There is a remarkable article on Insider.com which features a series of comments from young people who belong to “Generation Z.” Sometimes described as “Zoomers,” GenZ are those who were born after 1996. The article purports to reflect the fears of Generation . . . Continue reading →