Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09010. Ordination to ministry is the recognition by a local church that God has called and gifted a man for the work of an elder or pastor, and its public setting apart of him for that work. Notice what that definition does not say. It does not say that ordination confers powers, creates a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09001. Biblical ecclesiology is simply the doctrine of the church, and the word itself tells you where to start. It comes from ekklesia, the New Testament word usually translated church, which means an assembly, a gathering of those called out. That is a more useful starting point than most people expect, because it means…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4197. We usually think it is possible to grieve the Spirit only as individuals, in the privacy of our own hearts, but Paul’s warning was written to a whole church and aimed at the way its members treated one another. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4196. The love among believers that Jesus made the badge of His disciples is not something we work up by trying harder to be nice; it is fruit the Holy Spirit grows. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, He said, if you have love for one another (John 13:35)….
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 4192. Few subjects make a congregation more uneasy than church discipline, and almost no one stops to ask what the Holy Spirit has to do with it. We tend to picture discipline as a grim, legal business, a committee with folded arms removing a name from a roll. Scripture paints something altogether warmer and…