(Rom. 14:1) Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.

Whenever we in the Churches of Christ discuss the scope of grace, Romans 14 inevitably comes up. One side argues that certain doctrinal issues are disputable matters (KJV: “doubtful disputations”) and hence covered by grace. The other side says only matters [...]

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I can hardly pretend to be an expert on how to lead a church into missional Christianity. My own congregation is in a transitional stage. This shouldn’t be surprising–very few churches have gotten past the transitional stage. The idea is still very new, and we’re all still feeling our way along. In 10 or 20 [...]

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Compare the approach to benevolence we find in the scriptures to the some of the attitudes that have prevailed for so long.
Tokenism.  Many churches have a benevolence budget of $500 and then just for the occasional beggar who comes to the door asking for a free lunch. It’s really just barely enough to salve our [...]

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Well, this is just a little of what the Bible says–because the Bible says a lot about being missional. Here are some high points.
Matthew’s Gospel starts the ministry of Jesus with the Sermon on the Mount. After the Beatitudes,  Jesus teaches,
(Matt. 5:13-16)  “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its [...]

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The modern world of science and technology is the product of a philosophy known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophy makes reason all important, and thus bans superstition and tradition. Nothing is true unless it stands up to the ultimate test of truth: human reason.
And this attitude led to the scientific method, science, and the computer [...]

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We now live in the age of the mega-church, with many congregations of over 10,000 members and some with campuses in several cities. This shouldn’t be too surprising– the same thing is happening in the American retail industry. Americans love huge stores and huge churches.
You see, the churches have been to business school and have [...]

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In response to the failure of government to teach our children to pray and to teach the poor to be industrious and chaste, many Christians tried to purify the government. In the 1980’s, Jerry Falwell famously founded the Moral Majority as a political movement, and was successful in helping elect Ronald Reagan president.
Later on, the [...]

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Forgive my use of a term borrowed from philosophy. Our “worldview” is the set of assumptions that dictate how we view the world. Many Americans, for example, see the world through the lens of personal freedom, while many Middle Easterners see the world through the lens of personal and family honor.
In the Christian church, for [...]

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This is the first of a series of posts on what’s being called “missional” Christianity or the missional movement. “Missional” is a newly coined term, referring to the mission of God on earth and our mission as Christians to work within God’s mission.
Well, that’s a little too abstract. It’s all about re-thinking church so that [...]

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I’ve yet to figure out how to convert an MS Word outline into a WordPress posting. Therefore, I’m attaching the outlines as .pdf files. It’s not elegant, but it’s at least possible. If anyone knows a way to make the conversion easily, please let me know.
PS — The outlines get better, I think, as we [...]

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We’ve been studying the Gospel of Luke the last quarter at church, and we’re about to continue for another quarter. Most of the teachers haven’t gotten past chapter 7, and we’ll surely not get done this second quarter either. However, we’ve decided to study the Gospel verse by verse and “suck the marrow” out of [...]

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The last three months, the Gospel Advocate has been blessedly free of declarations that those who disagree with the editors are damned, and I’m thankful for it. I hope this trend continues. If we could just get over the habit of making every emotional issue a salvation issue, we may well be able to have [...]

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Myth #10. It’s a good idea to talk about other denominations. In my early years of teaching, I taught as I’d been taught–by teaching what “the denominations” do wrong. Sadly, sometimes there were visitors there from exactly those denominations, and all I did was make myself–and my church–look mean spirited.
It took years of negative teaching [...]

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In my last series of posts dealing with Richland Hills and the instrumental music controversy, I mentioned the importance of building community in a congregation. It’s certainly more important and more urgent than buying a piano. You can bring in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and your members will still leave if your church doesn’t [...]

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Now, all that being said, I have trouble seeing the Churches of Christ remaining a cappella for another 100 years. There are some very good reasons to seriously consider picking up a guitar or violin.
First, we live in a world where a cappella music is nearly unheard of. It’s always created a barrier to the [...]

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Church leaders considering having two different worship styles, whether instrumental or not, in two separate services have to wrestle with the risk of effectively creating two congregations that share a common building. If one service is traditional and another is contemporary, two different tastes in music are accommodated, but then members are allowed to separate in [...]

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It’s well known among the Churches of Christ that our largest congregation, the Richland Hills Church of Christ in Ft. Worth, recently decided to add an instrumental Saturday night worship service to their two Sunday morning a cappella services. I understand that the decision cost them 200 members, but that, in less than six months, [...]

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The men who are waiting there in the back to pass out the trays to pick up the collection are perhaps the most under-appreciated servants of the church. As they pass the trays from row to row, they try hard to be inconspicuous in their labors and not to distract from the meditations of the [...]

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There are a host of practical questions that arise in an effort to arbitrate a case between brothers. I don’t know all the answers, but here’s a stab at some answers–
Who is my brother?
This is, of course, the hottest, most difficult issue in the Churches of Christ today. I have my opinion (see The Holy [...]

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In a frequently ignored passage, Paul commands us not to take our disputes to the secular courts but to resolve them within the church.
(1 Cor. 6:1-8) If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? 2 Do you not know [...]

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