Articles for tag: Grace

March 1, 2022

Chris Philbeck

Chris Philbeck

The Most Important Thing

By Chris Philbeck My wife and I recently attended a pastors and wives retreat just outside of Phoenix. It was a great experience for both of us. While we’ve been married for almost 40 years, it’s always good to get away from the busyness of life to reconnect. The retreat also included some times when the pastors and wives split to focus on separate topics. One session for the pastors began with the question: What do you think is the most important thing in good preaching? Hearing the various answers—such as connection, engagement, relevance, vulnerability, etc.—was interesting. At one point

March 1, 2022

Mark E. Moore

Authentic Gospel

Authentic Gospel

By Mark E. Moore Words get tossed about recklessly. We use love for a sweater and a spouse. Few things are actually awesome. And like has been functionally reduced to a comma in common vernacular. Most of the time this loose language matters little. But when it comes to the bedrock of our faith, we might want to be a little more faithful to the meaning of our words. So, let’s start with this question: What precisely is “the gospel”? THE GOSPELS OF THE GREEKS AND THE ROMANS The term gospel, which literally means “good news,” was not originally a

January 17, 2022

Christian Standard

Draining the Cup

As we gather around the Lord’s table, consider two things about this “cup of death” Jesus drained: (1) the potency of the cup, and (2) the resolve of the one who drank from it.

January 1, 2022

Doug Crozier

Building a Leadership Pipeline

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13). As 2020 started, the church in America was already coping with issues ranging from racial tensions to gay marriage, all while competing with sports for a family’s attention on Sunday mornings. Then COVID-19 arrived in full

January 1, 2022

Mark Scott

How to Prevent Message Drift When You Call Your Next Preacher

Message drift is not new. Israel faced it. When Moses predicted that the Lord God would raise up a prophet like him (a reference to the Messiah), he also warned against prophets who would presume to speak in God’s name but actually speak in the names of other gods (Deuteronomy 18:15, 20). Jeremiah ran into a similar situation with a false prophet named Pashhur (Jeremiah 20:1-6; cf. 14:14; 23:32). Message drift was not foreign to the New Testament either. In the Olivet discourse Jesus predicted that false prophets would arise (before the destruction of Jerusalem) and lead many astray, and

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