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: 6 minutesQuestion 09016. The sheer number of Christian denominations is one of the first things an outsider notices about the church, and it rarely lands well. Somebody comes to faith, starts looking for a church, and finds that one small town holds a Baptist chapel, an Anglican parish, a Methodist circuit, a Pentecostal fellowship and two…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01165. KJV-Only members turn up in most Bible-believing churches sooner or later, and how a pastor responds to them says a great deal about the health of the congregation. I want to be honest from the outset: I do not hold the KJV-Only position myself, and I think it rests on claims that do…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4195. When Paul calls the Philippians to be of one mind, he is not asking a roomful of different people to think identical thoughts, and a great deal of needless guilt has been laid on believers who assumed he was. The language appears across Paul’s letter to Philippi, in his plea that they stand…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4194. When Paul tells the Ephesians to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3), he hands the church one of its most precious and most misunderstood phrases. People reach for it whenever they want to paper over a disagreement, as though the unity of the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4193. Nothing wounds a congregation quite like church division, and nothing exposes how badly we need the Holy Spirit more clearly than the way a fellowship can tear itself apart over things that will not matter in a hundred years. A fallout over the colour of the carpet, a faction gathering round a charismatic…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2. Does doctrine divide the church? You have probably heard it stated as though it were settled fact: doctrine divides, but love unites. The idea is that if we would only set aside our tiresome theological differences and concentrate on relationships, the church would be stronger and happier. It sounds gracious, even spiritual. But…