Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11029 Few topics have caused more friction in local churches over the past fifty years than the question of worship styles. The so-called “worship wars” have divided congregations, exhausted pastors, and generated an enormous amount of heat with remarkably little light. The question deserves a careful, biblical answer rather than the tribal loyalties it…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11027 Few words in the Christian vocabulary are more frequently used and more poorly understood than “worship.” In contemporary church culture, worship has become almost synonymous with singing. A “worship leader” leads the music. The “worship time” is the part of the service before the sermon. But the biblical concept of worship is far…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11031 The word “liturgy” produces strong reactions in evangelical circles. For some, it conjures images of dead formalism, robes, and scripted religion that leaves no room for the Spirit. For others, it represents the accumulated worship wisdom of two thousand years of Christian devotion. The reality, as is often the case, is more nuanced…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 12029 The transgender movement did not emerge from nowhere. It has intellectual roots, ideological commitments, and a traceable history that stretches back further than most people realise. Understanding where the movement came from is not an exercise in conspiracy thinking. It is essential for the church to engage the ideas critically rather than simply…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 60019 The Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the most visible and active religious organisations in the world. Their door-to-door evangelism, their distinctive publications (particularly The Watchtower and Awake!), and their refusal of blood transfusions, military service, and national flag salutes make them recognisable in most societies. They present themselves as the true restoration of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09004 Infant baptism, or paedobaptism, is practised by the majority of the world’s Christians, including Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and many Methodists. Given its prevalence, it is reasonable to ask whether Scripture supports the practice. The answer, examined on purely biblical grounds, is that it does not. This is not said…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07071 The word legalism gets used in at least two quite different ways in contemporary Christianity. Sometimes it means what it should mean: the error of trying to earn righteousness before God through law-keeping, or of adding human rules to Scripture and binding consciences where God has not. Other times it is used as…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07028 Before anyone can be reconciled, there must have been a separation. The New Testament does not soften what that separation looks like: human beings, by nature and by choice, are at enmity with God. Not merely distant from Him, not simply ignorant of Him, but opposed to Him. Reconciliation is the doctrine that…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07093 Of all the soteriological categories the New Testament uses, union with Christ may be the most comprehensive and the least understood. Justification describes the believer’s legal standing; sanctification describes their moral transformation; adoption describes their relational status. Union with Christ underlies all of these without being reducible to any one of them. Whether…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08087 The idea that Jesus preached to demons during the period between His death and resurrection has a long history in Christian thought and is closely connected to the interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19. Did Jesus descend to the realm of the dead and address demonic beings, and if so, what was the purpose…