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For the last two days, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with Art’s latest comment on my post “Replay: How do we edify others?” First, I think the comment is a well-articulated comment and a necessary component of our discussion of edifying one another when we gather with the church. Second, Art’s comment is another indicator that he should be writing this stuff for his own blog&...

Josh at “Called to Rebuild” has written another excellent post. This one is called “Missing the church.” He begins by explaining that many close friends have been transitioning out of his life lately. Josh feels the loss… and that along is an amazing thought. In a time when “church” has become just another activity, it is a real family for Josh. Next, he describes a time w...

Two year ago, in January 2010, I started a series on the subject of mutual edification by looking at a passage in 1 Thessalonians. The series continued with posts about passages in Romans and 1 Corinthians. Finally, it ended with posts that asked a couple of questions: 1) who edifies whom? and 2) how do we edify others? The post below was the conclusion of that series: “How do we edify others?” I do no...

Four years ago, I wrote a post called “Learning to live together.” (While I normally keep the titles of my previous posts in “replays,” I decided to change this one slightly to better reflect the content.) In this post, I was thinking about some of the opportunities that God had given us to share our lives with others. These opportunities are not always pleasant; sometimes they are very pai...

In the introduction to this series, I explained how I thought that people today tend to compartmentalize their lives. Because of this, we often compartmentalize what we consider the mission of God as well. In the previous post, I considered proclamation of the gospel as part of the mission of God as demonstrated and taught by Jesus and Paul. In this post, I look at their example of strengthening believers as part ...

My good friend Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” is asking a very good question in his post “What Size Should a Church Family Be?” (If you haven’t met Eric yet, he and I have known each other for about 9 years. Recently, he resigned from his job as a vocational pastor because of some convictions based on his study of Scripture.) Eric begins where my previous post stopped: the purp...

If you peruse the posts (old and new) on this blog, you’ll find that I write often on the subjects of church gatherings and mutual edification. Why? Well, for one thing, for my PhD dissertation I am studying mutual edification as the purpose of the church gathering together from the perspective of Scripture. For another thing, well, I think the church should all work together to build up one another in matur...

Have you heard someone say before that Christians always perform for an audience of one? Whether that person is preaching, teaching, singing, dancing, praying, whatever, everything is always done for an audience of one – meaning God, of course. In a sense, I understand what that means. Obviously, everything that we do can and should be done for the glory of God. However, that does not mean that God is our on...

As I said in a previous post, I’m working my way through a series on the role of discernment when the church gathers together. (See the “Introduction” post here.) I’ve also stated already that I believe that discernment is the work of those who are gifted at “distinguishing between spirits,” but it is also the work of those who are not gifted in that way. Similarly, I pointed ou...

Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” has written a very good post called “Edification Necessarily Leads to Mission.” His post reminds me of a post I wrote a few months ago called “Which is important for the church: edification or mission?” Edification, as part of the process of helping people follow Jesus, should lead to many things, including (as Eric says) proclaiming the good...