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Is it true that God has blessed the United States? If so, why has He done so? Many evangelicals will answer with the thought that God has blessed the United States because of or to encourage a Christian nation and the resulting history of missions giving one would expect from a Christian nation. I am [...]
I have completed the text of The Joshua One Manifesto, which is subtitled: “Ten Things U.S. Christians and Churches Desperately Need in the 21st Century.” This document identifies the things Joshua One Ministries was formed to promote, and identifies the main topics we wish to discuss on this blog. Please take a moment to read [...]
In every church, enough time must be given to prayer and prayer management or there will be no prayer miracles. Asking the minister responsible for administration of the Word to administer prayer is like asking the neurologist to be the cardiologist, too. While in very small communities the police officer may also be the firefighter, in most towns [...]
Francis Schaeffer I mentioned Francis Schaeffer’s The Church at the End of the 20th Century a few days ago (see “What Will the Church Be Like 30 Years from 1970?”). Schaeffer is one of the great Christian philosopher-theologians of the preceding century. I’m reading the aforementioned 1970 book for the first time, and I promised [...]
I have been reading Francis Schaeffer’s book, The Church at the End of the 20th Century. Schaeffer, the great evangelical philosopher-theologian who died in 1984, published the book in 1970. It has been on my shelf for years, but I am reading it now for the first time. Part of the intrigue of reading this [...]
I recently read David Murrow’s book, Why Men Hate Going to Church (2004, Thomas Nelson, Inc.). Despite the book’s numerous faults, Murrow has made one of the most important observations of this decade about church practices. Let’s get the negative out of the way first, and then get to substance. Murrow’s publisher should have brought [...]
In previous articles such as this one, I have been exploring the seemingly near fatal disease of materialism in the church — not just the materialism of individual church members, but materialism inherent in the outreach and programming of churches themselves. In challenging modern attitudes about church growth, I have gone further than to merely [...]
The Scriptures teach that materialism is risky, and can cause many harms. See, e.g., Eccl. 5:10-12 ( “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.” [NIV]). Sermons about the risks of materialism are not uncommon. But is it possible for churches to become so materialistic that, like [...]
In my previous post (“Two Months and 1,543 Readers Later”), I mentioned that one of several reasons we have had so much traffic during the second month of this blog’s existence is the articles we wrote about a recent church split in Dallas. From the moment we published those articles, we have been very aware [...]
Is the Christian church of America in serious decline? Is the modern U.S. church a pitiful representation of the church described in the New Testament, the church Christ died to establish, the church we are called to be? I believe it is. My colleague, Rod Heggy, believes it is. Our concern for the modern church [...]
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