Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09087 The letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 make it unmistakably clear that Jesus evaluates local congregations and that His assessment is not always favourable. The church at Ephesus had abandoned its first love. Sardis had a reputation for being alive but was dead. Laodicea was lukewarm, on the verge of being…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09090 The idea of formal church membership strikes some believers as an unnecessary bureaucratic addition to what should be a simple, Spirit-led community. Others regard it as so obviously biblical that the question itself seems odd. The reality is that the New Testament does not contain the phrase “church membership,” does not describe a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09072 Public marches and demonstrations that carry the name of Jesus raise genuine questions about Christian witness, the nature of the church’s mission, and the practical realities of who is leading and what is being communicated. The “March for Jesus” movement, which began in London in 1987 and grew into a global phenomenon through…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09086 Christians frequently speak of “the church” as though the word refers to a single, self-evident reality, yet the New Testament uses ekklesia in ways that point to two distinguishable dimensions of that reality. Understanding the relationship between the universal church and the local church is essential for grasping what it means to belong…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09071 Ecumenism is the movement toward greater unity and cooperation among Christian churches and denominations. It has taken many forms over the past century, from informal local partnerships to vast institutional structures like the World Council of Churches. For evangelical Christians, the question is not whether unity matters, because Jesus Himself prayed for it…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09069 The spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit for the building up of the body of Christ, but the history of the church, from the New Testament onwards, is littered with examples of gifts being exercised in ways that damage rather than edify. The potential for misuse does not invalidate the gifts…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09066 Consubstantiation is the term commonly used to describe the Lutheran view of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper. It represents a middle position between the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the memorial view held by Baptists and many evangelicals, and understanding it helps clarify both what Lutherans believe and why the memorial…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09068 Every believer has been given at least one spiritual gift by the Holy Spirit, distributed according to His will (1 Corinthians 12:11). The question of how to discover those gifts is one of the most practical and personally significant questions a growing Christian can ask. The answer requires a combination of biblical understanding,…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09064 The question of whether communion is “just” symbolic often arises from a sense that something deeper ought to be happening at the Lord’s Table than the passing of bread and grape juice. Behind it lies a genuine instinct: if the Lord’s Supper were nothing more than a nostalgic re-enactment, it would be difficult…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09057 The word “ordinance” is the term most Baptists and many other evangelicals use for what other traditions call “sacraments.” The distinction is not pedantic. It reflects a fundamentally different understanding of what baptism and the Lord’s Supper actually are and what they accomplish. The New Testament describes two practices that Christ commanded His…