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Wayne from “The Lifestream Blog” has written an excellent article called “Finding Fellowship.” In this post, Wayne is answering an email from a reader who is struggling with some “church” issues. The reader asked several questions, but most of them originated in Hebrews 10:25. Here is part of Wayne’s response: Believers who love each other will get together. That’s what friends and family do. My kids...

There are two excellent posts at “GraceWorks.CA” on the topic of preaching: “Why do we preach?” and “The Church in dialogue with God.” The first post examines the emphasis placed on 2 Timothy 4:2 in defense of the modern practice of monologue speeches given by leaders (pastors, elders, bishops) to the church. The second post examines some of the scriptural evidence for dialogue. In the first article, the author...

Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” has written (yet another) excellent post. This one is called “House Church – Flexibility.” The post is a continuation of Eric’s series on house churches (generally), although people who are part of any type of church should think seriously about these topics. Consider flexibility, for example. Eric writes: Simply put, the house church can do whatever needs to be done to both...

Jeremy at “Till He Comes” has written a great post called “Upgrade Your Church.” He recently “upgraded” some of his websites, but the upgrade caused his sites to be slower. So, Jeremy ended up reverting back to the original version of his sites. Next, Jeremy uses this experience as a metaphor for the church. Do we need an upgrade? Do we need to revert to an older version? You can read his comments on each part ...

My good friend Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” continues his string of excellent blog posts with one called “Should Churches Have Pastors? Why?” It’s a short post, and it primarily consists of Eric asking the two questions from the title: 1) Should churches have pastors? and 2) Why? I told Eric in the comments that I thought this was a very good pair of questions and that I wanted to think about them before I an...

In his latest essay, Dave Black asks an excellent question: “So We’ve Studied Acts. What Now?” Apparently, his fellowship recently completed a study of the Book of Acts. Dave recounts how they talked about the early church’s evangelism, missions, proclamation, quality of life together, leadership, prayer, and meetings. Then, he asks a series of questions that we all need to consider: What more can I say? The guidelines are...

Yesterday, I asked you to pray for my friend Jason who recently moved to South Africa for a year to minister in some villages there. (See my post “Pray for Jason in South Africa.”) I told you in that post that Jason landed in South Africa yesterday, and that he was getting settled in to his new home. Well, apparently it doesn’t take him long to settle in. According to his latest blog post “Arrival,” Jason and Wim (th...

Andy at “aBowden Blog” wrote a very good article called “Brothers, We Are Not Apostles.” In the post, Andy examines a common, modern (and perhaps even old) hermeneutic: assigning functions and characteristics of apostles in Scripture to elders/pastors today? Is this is a valid way to interpret Scripture? Andy writes: Perhaps, then, we are wrong in assuming Apostolic functions are transferred to pastors and elders. What wo...

Ed Stetzer recently published a post called “You Can’t Love a City if You Don’t Know a City, Pt 1.” While the post is primarily about the importance of research (you know, he does research), that’s not really what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about something he brings up in his first paragraph: “The city” is an emerging phrase that seems to be embraced by a growing number of Christians. ...

The title of this post comes from an email that Wayne from “Lifestream Blog” posted in his article “The Myth of Full-Time Ministry.” In the post, Wayne publishes an email that he received from a man who is planning to leave his position as a full-time missionary to Russia in which he was supported by a mission board. Why? To be a full-time missionary. Doesn’t make sense? Well, maybe this snippet will help: My wife an...