Church

The First Five Years Podcast

Jonathan Master
Dec 16, 2019
The First Five Jonathan and James welcome their friend Stephen Unthank. He’s pastor of Greenbelt Baptist Church in Maryland, and a contributing writer for PlaceForTruth.org . Stephen shares his experiences as a relatively new pastor…the joys and challenges of the calling…and, how it all lined up...

Is It Only About Trust?

Jonathan Kiel
Oct 23, 2019
Recently, my friend Adam Parker wrote a helpful article reminding us that a pastor is not an hourly employee. In his article, Adam describes how the work of pastoral ministry is difficult to quantify and more time in the office does not equal a more effective ministry. He also offers a gentle and...

The Pastor as Hourly Employee?

Adam Parker
Oct 21, 2019
One of my favorite things is getting together with other pastors and asking them how their ministry is going. Most of the time a pastor will say that things are going great, and then he will share some of the joys of his ministry. However, occasionally a pastor will sigh deeply and tell me that...

Ain't Just Putting On the Ritz

Adam Parker
Aug 28, 2019
Only a few days after Josh Harris told Instagram that he is no longer a Christian, Marty Sampson similarly announced that he is "genuinely losing [his] faith." To briefly summarize, the former Hillsong United lead singer is apparently the first person to notice that miracles aren't commonplace...

Decerebrated Frogs, the Straight Line and Cultural Accommodation

Nick Batzig
Feb 1, 2018
In 1869, the German physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, published a series of conclusions from tests he performed on frogs. In his book, Beitrage zur Lehre von den Functionen der Nervencentren des Frosches ( Contributions to the Theory of the Functions of the Nerve Centers of the Frog ) , Golz revealed...

The Patriarchy Movement: Five Areas of Grave Concern

Matt Holst
Oct 10, 2016
The church is an environment of extremes. The trouble with extremes is that they always contain a seed of truth, making them look and sound plausible to the careless bystander. By virtue of this fact, the church is also often full of susceptible bystanders ready to lap-up the latest and greatest...

What's in a Name?

Nick Kennicott
Aug 24, 2016
Names have always been important. There's a reason why "Judas" never tops the list of most popular baby names in any given year. When my wife and I were trying to pick out names for our children, we always had the same conversation: How will it sound with our last name, what does it mean, and how...

Moving Prayer to the Center of Ministry

Jay Harvey
May 2, 2016
God's people need to be prayed for. They need to led in prayer. They need to be taught how to pray. We all believe that prayer is important. Nevertheless, working our convictions about prayer into our practice of ministry is challenging. The Apostles declared "But we will devote ourselves to prayer...

The Biblical Basis for the Spirituality of the Church

Rick Phillips
Feb 4, 2016
Last week I posted a piece suggesting three principles by which the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) may respond to the call to confess racist tendencies in the years leading up to its founding. One of these principles was to carefully observe the doctrine of the spirituality of the church. I...

Buckets and Burning Churches: Luther, the Church, and Catholicity

Aaron Denlinger
Jan 25, 2016
In his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation of 1520, Luther takes aim at the Roman Church's "flimsy and worthless" claim to possess the exclusive authority and ability (by virtue of some unique spiritual gift) to interpret Scripture. "It is a wickedly invented fable," the Reformer...