Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11004. Christian giving is one of the few subjects where almost everyone agrees in principle and disagrees in practice. We all know we should be generous. Most of us give rather less than we imagine we do, and almost nobody wants the sermon. So let me try to make the case honestly, without guilt-driven…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 9103. Few subjects can empty a church faster than a badly handled disagreement about women in ministry. I have seen congregations where the question was never raised until a crisis forced it, and by then positions had hardened, personalities had become involved, and what should have been a careful study of Scripture had turned…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11003. Ask about Christian tithing in most evangelical churches and you will get a confident answer: ten per cent, off the top, and the Bible says so. Ask for the New Testament chapter and verse that requires it of the Church, and the room usually goes quiet. I want to handle this carefully, because…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 9102. The relationship between prophecy and teaching is one of those questions that looks like a technicality until it lands in the middle of a church meeting. Someone stands up in a service and says the Lord has laid something on their heart, and immediately the congregation is asking whether that was a word…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11002. Biblical fasting is the deliberate setting aside of food, for a set time, in order to give undivided attention to God. That is the whole of it, and everything else people attach to the practice is either application or invention. It is one of the least discussed and most misunderstood habits in Christian…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9100. Are pastor, elder and bishop three different offices or three words for the same one? The New Testament answer is clearer than most church structures would suggest, and getting it right has consequences for how a congregation is led. My position is that elder and bishop describe a single office viewed from two…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11001. Ask me how Christians should read the Bible and my first instinct is to ask what you expect to happen when you open it. Some people read the Bible the way they read an instruction manual, hunting for the paragraph that solves today’s problem. Others read the Bible the way they read poetry,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9099. What distinguishes a parachurch organisation from a church? The question sounds academic until a congregation is asked to fund one, staff one, or send its young people away for a week with one, and then it becomes very practical indeed. My short answer is that a parachurch organisation is a voluntary society formed…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 09092 Whether a congregation should be led by one pastor or by a plural eldership is a question with more practical consequence than most people expect. It shapes how decisions are made, how a minister is protected from himself, and what happens to a church when its leading figure is ill, or wrong, or…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9098. A church covenant is a written statement of mutual promises that members make to God and to one another when they join a congregation. It usually speaks of walking together in love, of watching over one another, of attending faithfully, of contributing to the work, and of submitting to discipline where necessary. Some…