Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4090. People are sometimes genuinely surprised that the gift of administration appears in the Bible at all, as though spreadsheets and rotas and Spirit-given gifts belonged to two entirely different worlds. But there it plainly is in Paul’s list, and the gift of administration is a Spirit-given ability to steer, organise and steward the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09095 The question of how large or small a church should be generates strong opinions on every side. Megachurch advocates point to growth as evidence of God’s blessing. House-church advocates insist that anything beyond a living room has lost the New Testament pattern. Both claims deserve to be tested against what Scripture actually says,…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09019 How a church governs itself is not a matter of indifference. The way authority is structured, decisions are made, and leaders are held accountable shapes every aspect of congregational life, from how doctrine is protected to how conflict is resolved. Congregational church government is one of the historic models of church polity, and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09030 Every church is imperfect, because every church is made up of sinners in the process of being sanctified. The presence of problems, disagreements, and frustrations does not make a church unhealthy. What makes a church unhealthy is a pattern of dysfunction that is systemic, unaddressed, and damaging to the spiritual lives of its…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09081 Ephesians 4:11 lists the gifts Christ has given to the church: “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.” The phrasing of the final pair in the original Greek has generated a longstanding debate: are “pastors” and “teachers” two separate callings, or is Paul describing a single, combined role? The answer…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09078 The role of a pastor is one of the most misunderstood callings in the modern church. Contemporary culture has turned the pastor into a CEO, a life coach, a brand manager, or an entertainer, depending on the context. The New Testament has a different picture entirely. The pastor is a shepherd, and the…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 09076 Not every gathering that calls itself a church is one in the biblical sense. The word ekklesia in the New Testament refers to an assembly of called-out ones, those who belong to Christ and are gathered in His name under His authority. But what makes such a gathering genuinely biblical rather than simply…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 5004 The question of masculinity has become genuinely contested in contemporary Western culture. From one direction comes the insistence that traditional masculine virtues are inherently problematic, expressions of privilege and domination that require deconstruction. From another, a reactive form of masculinity has emerged that confuses aggression, emotional closure, and domination with genuine strength. Neither…