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…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 09053. Should Christians attend church? I am aware that a minister answering this question is like a barber telling you that you need a haircut, so let me say at the outset that I am not arguing for the survival of an institution. I am arguing for something the New Testament assumes so completely…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09033. Whether online church can replace physical attendance is a question almost nobody asked before 2020 and almost every minister has been asked since. Services went to a screen out of necessity, a good many people found the arrangement convenient, and a proportion of them never came back. The question is now a live…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09029. Deciding whether to leave a church is one of the loneliest decisions a Christian makes, and it is usually made badly. People stay far too long in places that are damaging them, or they walk out over something that would have been settled by one honest conversation. Both mistakes hurt, and both are…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08171. Every October somebody asks whether Christians celebrate Halloween or whether we should have nothing to do with it, and the question usually arrives with a costume already in the hallway and a knock expected at seven. I am going to give you principles rather than a rule, because Scripture gives principles here and…