Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09099 The landscape of Christian ministry includes thousands of organisations that are not churches but exist to serve Christian purposes: mission agencies, campus ministries, Bible translation societies, relief organisations, theological seminaries, and many more. These parachurch organisations play an enormous role in global Christianity. The question is how they relate to the local church…
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: 5 minutesQuestion 09094 The phrase “breaking bread” appears at several key points in the New Testament, and its interpretation has significant implications for how churches understand and practise the Lord’s Supper. Was the early church observing a brief, formal ordinance of bread and wine, or were they sharing a full communal meal in which the bread…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09093 The relationship between the church and the state has been a source of tension, compromise, and outright disaster throughout two thousand years of Christian history. The question of whether a church should partner with a government or state agency in its ministry touches on the church’s identity, its mission, its freedom, and the…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 09089 Church discipline is one of the most misunderstood and most neglected aspects of New Testament church life. For some, the very phrase conjures images of harsh judgementalism, public shaming, and spiritual abuse. For others, it has become so unfamiliar that the idea of a church confronting a member’s sin seems incompatible with the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09091 Leaving a church is one of the most difficult decisions a believer can face, and it is also one of the most frequently made for the wrong reasons. The consumer mentality that characterises much of Western Christianity treats church involvement as a service to be evaluated and discarded when it no longer meets…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09047 Not every organisation that calls itself a church is one. The New Testament presents a picture of the church that has specific characteristics, specific commitments, and specific functions, and throughout history Christians have recognised that certain features mark the difference between a genuine church and something that has adopted the name without the…
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 09003 Baptism is one of the most visible acts of the Christian life, and it is also one of the most debated. Who is it for? Is it reserved for those who have already believed, or does it extend to the children of believers as well? The answer to this question shapes how churches…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09083 The question of whether churches should pay taxes touches on the intersection of the church’s spiritual mission and its existence as an institution within a civil society. Across most Western nations, churches and religious organisations have historically been exempt from certain forms of taxation. But is this appropriate? Is there a biblical principle…