Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9114. Touch not my anointed is one of the most misused sentences in the English Bible, and I have heard it deployed to shut down every kind of legitimate question. A leader is challenged about money, doctrine, or conduct, and someone stands up to warn the congregation that they are touching God’s anointed. The…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9107. The complementarian and egalitarian positions are the two main answers evangelicals give to the question of how men and women relate in the home and in the church, and the labels get thrown about with far more confidence than accuracy. Before anyone can decide between them, they need to know what each actually…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 9103. Few subjects can empty a church faster than a badly handled disagreement about women in ministry. I have seen congregations where the question was never raised until a crisis forced it, and by then positions had hardened, personalities had become involved, and what should have been a careful study of Scripture had turned…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 09050. The role of deacons is one of the most misunderstood things in church life, and the misunderstanding runs in two opposite directions. In some congregations deacons have become a board that runs the church and hires the minister. In others the title has become honorary, given to long-standing members as a mark of…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 09049. The role of elders is set out in the New Testament with more care than almost any other practical matter, and yet many believers could not name what an elder is supposed to do. They know elders exist. They may know who theirs are. Beyond that it gets vague, and vagueness about leadership…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1135. Women teaching and preaching generates more heat in contemporary Christianity than almost any other practical question I am asked, and I understand why. Positions range from full egalitarianism, where no ministry distinctions exist between men and women at all, to a strict complementarianism that some apply so broadly it silences women’s voices well…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4124. The gift of leadership is one of those gifts about which there is both too much talk and too little clarity in the contemporary church. Leadership has become something of a cultural obsession, and Christian ministry has not been immune to the trend. Books on leadership proliferate; conferences promise to develop leaders; organisations…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4168. The Holy Spirit empowers elders for the work of leading a local church, and the New Testament shows us how, in the appointing of overseers, in the gifts He gives them, and in the daily strength He supplies for a demanding task. When people ask how the Spirit empowers elders, they often picture…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4177. What is the Spirit’s role in a person’s calling to ministry, and how can anyone be sure that the call is from God rather than from their own ambition or a passing enthusiasm? This is one of the weightiest questions a believer can face, because a genuine calling to ministry shapes the whole…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 4169. The Holy Spirit and ordination are joined together in the New Testament far more closely than our tidy modern ceremonies sometimes let on. We tend to picture ordination as a service of certificates, robes and a kind handshake from the deacons, and there is nothing wrong with marking the moment well. Yet when…