I’m planning over the next week or so to look at how we as churches address some of the ethical and pastoral issues that matter to people in our congregations. Last week, I ran a twitter poll asking my followers about when they’d last heard a pastor talk about particular issues. The first issue was… Continue reading When did you last hear a pastor addressing abortion?
Tag: application
Do we need to make Scripture relevant?
Over the weekend we saw a crisis start to take shape. It was in effect self-inflicted. Warnings that there might some pressure on fuel supplies led to panic buying and over the weekend the pumps ran dry. In this article on Sunday, I commented that it would be peculiar if the crisis we were facing… Continue reading Do we need to make Scripture relevant?
Preaching in the middle of a crisis
Over the last couple of days, I ran a little survey on twitter asking people when was the last time they’d heard pastors addressing specific contemporary issues. You can see the results here and I’m planning to share a few articles later this week with further analysis and discussion of them. One thing that came… Continue reading Preaching in the middle of a crisis
The ugliness of greed
I’m following up on our study of Romans 6:15-23 where we talked about sanctification. There I suggested that in response to sin’s temptation we should ask three questions: In what ways are we tempted to see the sin as attractive and desirable? In what ways is it in fact ugly, dangerous and destructive? In what… Continue reading The ugliness of greed
How much application?
We are usually told that we need “more application” and that our sermons shouldn’t become boring technical lectures, so this article from Chris Thomas may prove a surprising read to many. For balance, you may want to read this from Steve Kneale showing that there are still people arguing for more application. I also want… Continue reading How much application?
Going Deeper
We often talk about the need to go deeper into God’s Word. A few years back, Andrew Sach and Nigel Benyon wrote a helpful little book with the title “Dig Deeper” which was all about the tools we can use to get a better grasp on what God’s Word is saying to us. The risk… Continue reading Going Deeper
“If we cannot learn about relationships from the Trinity then where can we?”
This is a quote from my article on Ware and Grudem the other day. It was picked up by Liam Goligher who argued that the statement was flawed because first of all there is a creator/creature division and secondly because the members of the Trinity are persons not people, there is no partition on God… Continue reading “If we cannot learn about relationships from the Trinity then where can we?”
Application Overload
Yesterday I wrote about attention spans and suggested that the important question was not to do with how we felt people were doing at staying with us for the duration of the sermon but three key questions. How much do they take in? How long are they able to retain it for? How are they… Continue reading Application Overload
Food from around the web
My friend from Oak Hill days, Stephen Watkinson has resurrected his blog “Northern Souls”. Here he writes on the importance of “hammering home” application if we want to make sure that churches get the challenging things that God has to say to us. Facing the Day: This is a guest post by Rachel Lane on… Continue reading Food from around the web
Faithroots 