October 19, 2022
News briefs about ICOM, a new preaching resource from e2, a new campus for Redemption Christian Church, upcoming women's events at Ozark and Manhattan Christian colleges, and Bob Russell's take on Halloween.
September 1, 2022
By Tyler McKenzie Church growth shouldn’t be the crowning pursuit of success among leadership. And yet, we’ve framed the pursuit of growth as natural and celebrate its attainment as health. In part one of this article, I shared four concerning trends I’ve observed in American evangelical churches/ministries that can be explained (at least in part) as a consequence of the idolatrous pursuit of the gospel of growth. In this conclusion to the article, I share four more trends that may be indicative of that pursuit. 5. A Culture of Competition over Church (big C) Unity Sometimes I question if this
September 1, 2022
By Tokishia Dockery-Ragland What part should one’s ethnicity play in their faith? Or should it play any role at all? These are huge resounding questions for me, especially over the past 20 years, during which I’ve served or been a part of three multiethnic churches (and been part of multiethnic ministry staffs). But these questions certainly are not new. If we’re honest, these questions, this discussion, predates us all. How Does Ethnicity Affect Faith? I believe ethnicity should be acknowledged and that ethnicity does play a part in our faith. Merriam-Webster defines ethnicity as “ethnic quality or affiliation” and ethnic
September 1, 2022
By Michael C. Mack Never has our culture been more perplexed about how to answer the seemingly simple question, “Who am I?” It’s hardly a surprise: The more the world drifts from the Creator, the more people struggle with their identity. We lose our sense of who we are when we forget whose we are. Satan is complicit, of course, in this case of identity theft. In this issue, we address various matters of identity today. Our writers look at identity biblically, speaking truth in love, with a positive, humble attitude. And we hope our readers will have a similar
September 1, 2022
By Osharye Hagood A godly woman knows what God says about her and that she does not have to wait until she is thin enough, smart enough, perfect enough, strong enough, or socially accepted enough to add value to the church. A woman needs a place that understands and accepts her inevitable failings along the journey, just as a man does. Jesus learned obedience through suffering, and women will do so as well. We need to experience that the church is not a culture of shame but a family of love, acceptance, and support. Yet, for so many women, this
August 11, 2022
This past weekend, more than 1,000 volunteers from 10 churches united to serve over 40 schools throughout the Louisville, Ky., community. Although each church served their respective schools in diverse ways, there were shared goals.
August 3, 2022
How does your church show love to area schools, teachers, and students? For the last eight years, Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky.—known as the Love the ‘Ville church—has done so with thousands of bags of mulch and hundreds of volunteers. . . .
Some families still gather around the dinner table at the end of a long, hard day to break bread together. It’s a place to talk, laugh, and cry. In much the same way, Jesus gathered with his disciples around a table at the Last Supper. . . .
July 1, 2022
By Chris DeWelt “O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us!” —Robert Burns (“To a Louse”) Many years ago, Carol and I were learning Spanish while temporarily living in Costa Rica and attending a school that specializes in helping missionaries prepare linguistically for life in Latin America. Not long after we arrived, the school’s director invited us to his office to get to know us. “So what agency are you with?” was his first question. “We are direct-support missionaries,” I happily replied. His face turned quizzical, and then he asked, “What church are
July 1, 2022
By Matt Proctor The movie Apollo 13 tells the true story of astronauts James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John L. “Jack” Swigert. On their way to the moon in April 1970, an explosion left them in a crippled spacecraft 200,000 miles from Earth—low on power, losing cabin heat, flight trajectories off. “Houston, we have a problem.” As John Ortberg relates the story in Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them, suddenly, these three astronauts needed a community of NASA scientists to save them, and these scientists were not your normal movie heroes—no chiseled good looks or superpowers. They were
Greek scholar Owen Crouch was mentioned earlier this week in an article about Del Harris's induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Dr. Crouch served several Christian colleges and wrote 10 books. Today we share an article from 1953 that Dr. Crouch wrote about Acts 2:44-45.
June 20, 2022
Joel and Obadiah each had something to say about the day of the Lord. For Joel it was the signal that God was turning a new page in history. . . . For Obadiah it was that all nations should take a cue from the defeat of Edom for how they treated God’s people.
May 30, 2022
We all can relate to Jonah because at some point we all have tried to run from God. The Lord said go, and we said no. The Lord said speak, and we stayed silent. He sent us to Nineveh, and we headed for Tarshish. . . .
May 1, 2022
Can We Restore the Unity of the Restoration Movement?
March 17, 2022
Have we as Christians—conservative and liberal, independent and denominational, etc.—forgotten that we are not each other’s enemies . . . that we all have a common enemy in Satan?
January 24, 2022
How can we honor the Lord when conflicts arise? Is it possible to hold firm convictions without destroying relationships? Several principles found in Romans 14 can help us put this slogan into practice.
January 24, 2022
In Romans 14:1-5, 13-23, what surface-level issues were people in the church having with one another . . . and what deeper issues may have been behind those problems?
January 1, 2022
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
November 1, 2021
By Tyler McKenzie Every minister frustrated with their congregation, every person leaving their church, and every millennial who is deconstructing needs to read the opening chapter on community in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’sLife Together. It might save your ministry, your membership, or even your faith. Our communities feel irreparably broken right now. The last 18 months have been relationally traumatic. Most of us have “had it out”—at least once—with someone we love. Maybe it was on the family text thread, over dinner one night, or in the comments section of social media. Or maybe you didn’t have it out. Maybe their outrageous
November 1, 2021
By Greg Pruett Consider the chaotic world around you. You might conclude we live in dark times. But in the less visible world of God’s kingdom, this could be God’s finest hour! We live in that historic moment when God’s Word will soon reach every language community on earth. In the 1940s, the visionary originators of the Bible-translation movement first started gaining traction with the idea that everyone should have Scripture in their own language. They had no idea the coming generations would document more than 7,300 languages in the world. Brave men and women gave their lives in rural
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