Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09054. The house church movement covers a wide range of groups who meet in homes rather than in dedicated buildings, usually with informal leadership, participatory meetings and a conviction that this recovers something the institutional church has lost. In China and other places where the state is hostile it is not a movement at…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 09053. Should Christians attend church? I am aware that a minister answering this question is like a barber telling you that you need a haircut, so let me say at the outset that I am not arguing for the survival of an institution. I am arguing for something the New Testament assumes so completely…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09052. Church membership is a formal, covenanted commitment between a believer and a local congregation, in which the believer commits to the life, worship, discipline and support of that body, and the body commits to teach, care for and be accountable to that believer. Written out like that it sounds rather grand for something…
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: 6 minutesQuestion 09032. A parachurch ministry is a Christian organisation that works alongside the local church without being one. The prefix comes from the Greek para, meaning beside. Student unions, mission agencies, prison and hospital chaplaincy work, Christian publishers, camp organisations, counselling services, apologetics ministries and relief charities all fall into the category. Opinions divide sharply….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09047. What makes a true church true? It is not a theoretical question. People move house and need to find somewhere to worship. Believers watch a congregation drift and wonder whether it has crossed a line. Somebody starts a fellowship in a front room and asks whether it counts. Behind all of those situations…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09031. Church planting is the work of starting new local congregations, usually where none exists or where the existing churches cannot reach the population around them. It is not a modern technique borrowed from business, whatever the language of some conferences might suggest. It is the ordinary method by which the gospel spread across…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09046. The church exists for reasons that Scripture states plainly, and yet ask a dozen churchgoers what those reasons are and you will get a dozen answers, most of them about what the church does for them. That is not a cynical observation. It is what happens when a congregation stops asking the question…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 09039. Ask a Baptist what makes his church Baptist and sooner or later he will say something about local church autonomy. It is one of those phrases that gets used far more often than it gets explained, and I have sat in enough meetings to know that people mean rather different things by it….