Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11091 Dancing in church divides congregations more sharply than the biblical evidence really warrants, and it does so because the argument is almost never about the texts. It is about culture, temperament, memory of previous churches, and a set of instincts that people find difficult to articulate. So let me try to separate what…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11046. Saying Amen at the end of a prayer is so automatic for most of us that we have stopped hearing it, which is a shame, because it is one of the few words that has travelled unchanged from Hebrew through Greek into English. Children ask about it and adults rarely have an answer…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11031. The question of church liturgy divides evangelicals almost as neatly as music does, and usually for the same reason: we mistake our own habits for the biblical position. Baptists in particular tend to say we have no liturgy, which is never true. We have an order of service, a set of expected elements,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11030. Whether Christians should be raising hands in worship is a question I have been asked more often by people who feel awkward about it than by people who want permission, and that itself tells you something about how tangled the issue has become. In some churches raising hands is so normal that not…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11029. Arguments about worship styles have split more congregations in my lifetime than arguments about doctrine, which is a sobering thing for a Baptist minister to admit and an important thing to face honestly. Organ or band, hymnal or screen, choir or worship team, robes or jeans. These questions are not nothing, but they…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11028. Asking how we should worship God is a more dangerous question than it looks, because Scripture contains several accounts of people who worshipped God enthusiastically and wrongly, and it did not go well for them. Nadab and Abihu offered unauthorised fire. Uzzah steadied the ark with the best of intentions. Cain brought an…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11027. Biblical worship is far larger than the hour we spend singing on a Sunday morning, and that single misunderstanding has probably done more damage to the church’s worship than any argument over music ever has. When Scripture speaks about worship it reaches for words about bowing, serving, and giving God his due weight….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11025. The difference between preaching and teaching is one of those questions that sounds academic until you sit through a service where somebody got it wrong. I have heard lectures delivered from pulpits and I have heard rousing appeals delivered in Bible studies, and in both cases the congregation went home slightly hungry without…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9099. What distinguishes a parachurch organisation from a church? The question sounds academic until a congregation is asked to fund one, staff one, or send its young people away for a week with one, and then it becomes very practical indeed. My short answer is that a parachurch organisation is a voluntary society formed…
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…