Tag: Discipleship

By micoots
20/01/2017 0

Reading Out of Love for Others

Reading is a solitary pursuit. You grab your book, you kick back on the couch, and the hours roll by. But even though reading is a solitary pursuit, it is not necessarily a selfish one. Reading can actually be an important way to love others. Here are five ways to love others in your reading.

Read to Grow
You can love others by reading books meant to address flaws in your character or conduct. The husband who reads Dave Harvey’s When Sinners Say “I Do” is reading to better love his wife. The wo..

By micoots
17/01/2017 0

Why Be Anglican: Worship

I am doing a series on the blog about why I became Anglican, and last week I looked at the church calendar, and this week I want to dip into “worship,” by which I mean Sunday morning worship service. (I do not equate worship with Sunday morning worship, but Sunday morning worship is worship.)
Image used with permission.
If the church calendar shapes the church themes, the church liturgy for Holy Eucharist is shaped by a customary set of elements of the worship service. Each of these is needed, e..

By micoots
13/01/2017 0

How Black and White Christians Do Discipleship Differently

Survey: African Americans value spiritual formation in community, while whites prefer the opposite.

When it comes to spiritual formation and discipleship, African American Christians are in it together.

Black believers are more likely to position their growth in Christ in the context of community and fellowship, while white Christians take a more individualized approach, according to a study released this week from Barna Research.

The survey found that twice as many black Christians as whites..

By micoots
12/01/2017 0

The Hot ‘New’ Church Growth Method

A new study just unearthed a remarkable finding: conservative doctrine grows churches.

This isn’t necessarily what we’ve heard in recent years. Whether it’s the music, the attractive facility, or the feeling of community, we need something to keep the church growing—something besides biblical teaching. How surprising, then, that David Millard Haskell, Kevin N. Flatt, and Stephanie Burgoyne have found that doctrine grows churches. In their peer-reviewed scholarly article for the Review of Religi..

By micoots
12/01/2017 0

I Am a Shepherd and a Salesman

Ramny Perez was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in Florida and New York. He studied literature and philosophy at The City College of New York. He currently works as a insurance sales representative and is a full-time seminary student. He and his wife, Dayami, live in Louisville, Kentucky, and are members of Immanuel Baptist Church, where Ramny serves as an elder.

What do you do every day?

I work in sales. As soon as I get to work, I look through all my leads and tasks, determine a p..

By micoots
12/01/2017 0

6 Ways to Stir Your Affections for Weekly Preaching

Foundational instruction in expository preaching tends to focus on theology and methodology. This makes sense. Expository preaching is a theologically driven approach to preaching. We don’t commend this approach because we think it’s a great church growth idea, but primarily because of our theological convictions. Our convictions about God, humanity, the gospel, the nature of the Bible, the work of the Spirit, the centrality of Christ, the church, the role of pastors, the coming judgment, and mo..

By micoots
11/01/2017 0

Fitch Reviews JKA Smith: Worship Shapes Us

By David Fitch
JAK Smith’s ‘You are What You Love’ (Part 2): How Worship Shapes You to Love and Live Differently
In the previous post, I described Jamie Smith’s sketch of the human self as a homo liturgicus in his book You Are What You Love. Human beings are persons shaped to love by habits. We are all being shaped to love something, and these loves are misguided at best when shaped by the consumerist liturgies of the world we live in today. In response, Smith urges us to take a liturgical audit..

By micoots
10/01/2017 0

Three Gifts of Women Ministry (Michelle Van Loon)

By Michelle Van Loon, www.MomentsAndDays.org
and www.MichelleVanLoon.com
Last week in this space, I wrote about a flawed Proverbs 31-focused approach one congregation took when they decided to rethink their ministry to women. Even as I raised concerns, I noted that I’ve been enriched by time spent in prayer, study, fellowship, worship, and service with women’s-only groups.
Do these single-gender groups reflect who the Church is? Paul highlighted diversity within the Church, even as he reminded u..

By micoots
09/01/2017 0

David Fitch Reviews JKA Smith: Challenging Desire’s Assumptions

By David Fitch, professor at Northern Seminary
JAK Smith’s ‘You are What You Love’ (Part 1): Challenging the Everyday Assumptions About Desire
James K. A. Smith published a fabulous book earlier this year titled You Are What You Love. It is fabulous because he summarizes the important stuff in the first 2 books of his trilogy (Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom) in a way that is accessible, inviting and interesting. It exposits the challenges of the Christian life for the complexitie..

By micoots
08/01/2017 0

Inevitable Side Effects Of A Church Growth Ministry Model

Let’s be clear. The Bible in general and the book of Acts in particular records and affirms the expected and desired dynamic of statistical growth in and through Gospel healthy churches… and so do we. But whenever statistical growth becomes the focused objectiveof a church’s ministry (instead of a valued consequenceof its ministry), it is simply a matter of time until church leaders exchange Biblically defined principled faithfulness for worldly defined pragmatic success.

Some athletes, fascina..