Church-Planting and Pulpit-Priority

If you have tuned in to church-planting chatter lately, you may have heard something along these lines: “We’re more about community, you’re about a Sunday event.” “We’re more about being missional, you’re more about a pulpit.” It’s an emphasis on community and/or mission, over preaching.

Similarly, I recently heard this advice: “If you are on your way to the Sunday gathering and see your neighbor painting his fence, forget the gathering, turn around, go home and get your paintbrush.”

Now, serving our neighbors for the gospel is faithful, no doubt. Painting your neighbors fence could be in-roads to sharing the only message that saves. 

Genuine biblical community is a non-negotiable for the local church.

Dangerous Dichotomies

Even so, among church-planting discussion, there seems to be a false distinction between “community” and “missional,” and the ministry of the pulpit. There is a temptation to consider the pulpit a less fashionable, or even an optional, accoutrement to real, church-planting ministry.    Keep Reading>>>

My Take: Are evangelicals dangerous?

Are evangelicals dangerous? Well, certainly not in the sense that more secular voices warn. The vast majority of evangelicals are not attempting to create a theocracy, or to oppose democracy.

To the contrary, evangelicals are dangerous to the secularist vision of this nation and its future precisely because we are committed to participatory democracy.

As Christians committed to the Bible, evangelicals have learned to advocate on behalf of the unborn, believing that every single human being, at every stage of development, is made in God’s image.

Evangelicals worry about the fate of marriage and the family, believing that the pattern for human relatedness set out in Scripture will lead to the greatest human flourishing.

We are deeply concerned about a host of moral and cultural issues, from how to address poverty to how to be good stewards of the earth, and on some of these there is a fairly high degree of disagreement even among us.

Above all, evangelicals are those who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and are most concerned about telling others about Jesus. 

Most of America’s evangelical Christians are busy raising their children, working to support their families and investing energy in their local churches.   Read it all HERE