God’s Ways Accomplish God’s Goals

When reading through the New Testament it jumps out how passionately the early church engaged in prayer and teaching the word. In the book of Acts, it says they devoted themselves to teaching and to prayer. The word devoted means to persevere, to be constantly diligent and steadfastly attentive to. Prayer and teaching weren’t things they occasionally squeezed in among a variety of other activities. Prayer and teaching were front and center, and they constantly engaged in these spiritual activities.

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Jesus Outlined End Time Events

(A study of Matthew 24:1-14)

While visiting the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus’ disciples pointed out how grand the buildings of the temple were, and Jesus responded that there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down (vs 2). Later, the disciples asked him about the destruction of the temple and what would be the signs of the end (vs 3).

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What They’re Not Telling You About Tithing

While listening to sermons on tithing, I’ve heard preachers say that the way people spend their money is one of the best indicators of their true values, and I believe there’s a lot of truth in this statement. But let’s switch it around and apply this statement to the church instead of the individual. I don’t think anything reveals the true values of the institutional church quite like the way it spends money.

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Preaching In Today’s Church vs Preaching In The Bible

Most Christians consider preaching to be a fundamental requirement of the church, and the Sunday morning sermon is commonly revered as the most important event that takes place in the church each week. While there’s no doubt the Bible strongly endorses the ministry of God’s word, is the church’s traditional notion of preaching consistent with the way preaching is presented in the Bible?

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How God Measures Success

How should a church measure success? Many churches will give lip service to the idea of discipleship and seeing people become more like Jesus, but if you examine where they spend the majority of their time and effort it becomes clear that these are not priorities. For many churches, the primary gauge of success is the number of people attending their Sunday services. They want an exact head count of each and every being on the premises and are quite perturbed if they think the ushers didn’t do their math right and came up a few people short. If attendance is increasing everyone feels quite confident that things are going well, but a drop in attendance will trigger concerns that something is wrong. Continue reading “How God Measures Success” →