Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11006. Christian dating is a phrase the Bible never uses, and that alone should shape how confidently we answer this question. Courtship as we practise it is a modern arrangement, and anyone who claims chapter and verse for a particular method is stretching the text. What Scripture does give us is a settled understanding…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11005. Nothing brings people to my study door more often than the problem of knowing God’s will. Should I take the job, marry this person, move to that city, train for ministry, stay or go? Underneath the particular decision there is usually the same anxiety: that God has a single hidden plan, that I…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11004. Christian giving is one of the few subjects where almost everyone agrees in principle and disagrees in practice. We all know we should be generous. Most of us give rather less than we imagine we do, and almost nobody wants the sermon. So let me try to make the case honestly, without guilt-driven…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11003. Ask about Christian tithing in most evangelical churches and you will get a confident answer: ten per cent, off the top, and the Bible says so. Ask for the New Testament chapter and verse that requires it of the Church, and the room usually goes quiet. I want to handle this carefully, because…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11002. Biblical fasting is the deliberate setting aside of food, for a set time, in order to give undivided attention to God. That is the whole of it, and everything else people attach to the practice is either application or invention. It is one of the least discussed and most misunderstood habits in Christian…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11001. Ask me how Christians should read the Bible and my first instinct is to ask what you expect to happen when you open it. Some people read the Bible the way they read an instruction manual, hunting for the paragraph that solves today’s problem. Others read the Bible the way they read poetry,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09091 The decision to leave a church is one that most believers face at some point, and it is usually made badly. Some go too soon, at the first friction, and repeat the pattern in every congregation they join. Others stay far too long under teaching that is starving them, out of loyalty to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09083 Church tax exemption comes up more often now than it did twenty years ago, and the question is usually asked with an edge. Why should religious organisations receive relief that a small business does not? Is a church that accepts favourable treatment from the state compromised by it? Both are fair questions and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09063. The meaning of communion is not one thing but several, and I suspect that is why so many believers take the bread and cup each month without being able to say what they are doing. We know it matters. We know it has to do with the cross. Beyond that most of us…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09072 A March for Jesus, or something like it, comes round in most towns sooner or later, and the invitation usually arrives with an assumption that any serious Christian will want to be there. I have been asked about this many times, often with a second question attached in a lower voice: what about…