The Gospel Coalition website has launched and has numerous helpful resources: articles, audio, and video from men like Bruce A. Ware, C. J. Mahaney, D. A. Carson, Thabiti Anyabwile, and Tim Keller.
The Gospel Coalition is a response to the tragic neglect of the gospel—the very heart of Scripture and the Christian faith—in so much of modern-day evangelicalism.
The Christian Post reports that the dwindling Church of England is using a new book and outreach effort, which centers on The Simpsons TV show, to reach people with the Christian message.
Mixing It Up with the “Simpsons,” a book to be released by the Church of England’s publishing company, will be sent to youth advisers in every diocese across the country next week, the Sunday Telegraph reported, with the hope of showing how Christianity is relevant to life today through issues tackled in the popular U.S. TV cartoon series. Clergy will be urged to show episodes of “The Simpsons” that focus on Christian themes such as love and punishment.
The book’s author, Owen Smith, is a youth worker in the Kent Diocese of Rochester and insists the cartoon series is filled with biblical references. He looks to illustrate this in the book with quote comparisons.
Smith told the Sunday Telegraph: “’The Simpsons’ is hugely moral, with many episodes dealing with issues and dilemmas faced by young people. The willingness of the show’s writers to deal with questions of both morality and spirituality makes the program an ideal tool.”
Colin Adams asks Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Katwaba Baptist Church, Zambia, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:
Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
As far as I can see from the Word of God, preaching must be central to the life of the church. This can be seen from the way the church started in the New Testament. As soon as the first church was gathered together in Acts 2, the Bible records that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). . . .
How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
It takes anything between two to three hours, depending on how familiar I am with the subject or the text. Because I usually preach in a consecutive expository fashion in my own pulpit, most of the initial spade work would have been done much earlier. Hence, that is not included in this time. Also, I rarely ever write out my sermons in full. My final sermon outline is hardly ever more than one page long. So, again, you have to cut out the average writing time that most pastors go through. That is why I do not spend as much time in sermon preparation as most of my fellow preachers.
Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
It is very important. I go before God’s people with “a word from the Lord” and it is important to me that they go home after listening to my preaching with that word—or theme or idea. I ensure that my introduction waters their appetite for that one “word” and that my conclusion nails it in with some immediate application. . . .
What are the greatest perils that a preacher must avoid?
Familiarity and prayerlessness. I have preached for (only) twenty years and I sense the temptation to handle the work of preaching as “just one of those things”. Yet I am aware that these two vices will cost me the presence of God in preaching and I will soon become a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. May I add the temptation to use the Bible to say what you already started out wanting to say? . . .
What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
The sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon come immediately to mind. In the early years of my Christian life, I used to preach some of them out to an empty church building. Well, it was not completely empty because I had a few of my friends sitting in the pews, but it was not a worship service either. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Evangelistic Sermons and his Old Testament Evangelistic Sermons (both published by the Banner of Truth Trust) are great examples of evangelistic preaching. One can add to this his expositions in Romans and Ephesians. Those sermons are worth their weight in gold! You will notice, therefore, that I have learnt more from books that contain sermons rather than books that teach how to preach.
Don’t forget to take advantage of the Desiring God book sale. Every book that they sell in their online store is only $5! You won’t want to miss out on this great opportunity!
All books and study guides in our store are $5 today and tomorrow. There are no limits—if we run out of anything, we’ll just order more.
Update: If the store is working slowly for you, please consider continuing your order a little later. There’s a rush this morning, but the sale goes through Thursday at midnight so there is plenty of time to get your order in. Thanks! —Josh
“The first million was hard,” said Elder Dieter Uchtdorf, a member of the church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles who sits on the church’s missionary executive committee. “The second million will be easy. [The number of missionaries] will grow and it will grow fast.”
Mormon founder Joseph Smith believed he had a mandate to “proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.” Shortly after establishing the church with six people, Smith sent his younger brother, Samuel Smith, to neighboring towns with a knapsack full of copies of the Book of Mormon, the faith’s unique scripture.
Now scores of young men and women, older single women and retired couples serve the church as full-time missionaries for 18 months to two years. They are assigned in pairs to proselytize, perform humanitarian service, help people trace their genealogy or anything else church leaders ask them to do. They pay about $400 per month for the privilege; those who cannot afford it can be subsidized by the church.
“They face rejection and sometimes verbal abuse, but they soldier on,” Ballard said. “It’s a marvelous thing what these young men and women and couples do.”
Ed Stetzer has an article in Outreach on the top reproducing churches in America. Accompanying the article is a list of the top 25. Here are the criteria behind the list:
A “Top 25” list was compiled by ranking the top 40 respondents using self-reported criteria, such as:
the total number of church plants over the life of the church
the average number of churches planted each year
dollars and percentage of budget dedicated to church planting
the number of daughter churches that have planted a new church
We also factored in a church’s influence on the entire church-planting community. This list is ultimately a celebration and an evaluation of what all these churches are doing to reach people with the Gospel.
Someone pointed me to a neat story about how God used a missionary couple to reach hundreds of people who lived in a garbage dump in a Muslim country.
A missionary couple had been laboring in a certain Muslim country that I will not name for purposes of protection. They had become terribly discouraged in their attempts to share the gospel with the Muslims there, and they were about to quit and go home. However, they first decided to take a few days to fast and pray, asking the Lord for direction and guidance.
To their surprise, during this period of seeking, the Lord gave them this simple instruction, “Go to the garbage dump people.” The garbage dump people lived on the outskirts of this large Muslim city, the last people group anyone would normally ever want to visit. There are thousands of people there who literally live in the garbage dump.
. . .
They soon began an outreach to the garbage dump people. God’s anointing was obviously on the effort because after only a short time they had 30-40 people gathering around them for a Bible study in the garbage dump. In less than a year, 800-900 people were gathering every time the missionaries went in to preach and teach, which was three times a week.
First, the convicting words of James 2:1–5 come to mind:
2:1 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
Second, what a beautiful picture of the condescension of Jesus, who, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” —2 Corinthians 8:9 (cf. Phil 2:6ff)
Here are two recent stories about scantily clad dancing women in church (the first Protestant, the second Roman Catholic) that you might hope are someone’s attempt at a bad joke, but unfortunately aren’t.
The first concerns the Church of the Carthusians in the south of Cologne. The original story is in German, but has been translated by Chris Gillibrand.
(I tried to choose the least offensive of the available pictures.)
A female dancer dances in a skin coloured stocking in the middle of the church in front of the altar. She crawls about on the floor and wraps herself in a hanging down white cloth.
. . .
Nearly one thousand interested people waited outside the door of the former monastery, despite a thunderstorm—but in the end there was only room for four hundred people.
. . .
A man came to the microphone and announced, This is an erotic church service, can you move a bit closer together, all of you. This was followed by saxophone music and dance. The vicar arrived in a black cassock and barefoot. He announced that eroticism and lust are not taboo areas pushed aside by God. In fact, “lust has to be lived out,” said Armin Beuscher, who tempered his speech immediately, by saying, “we are of course today in this service only able to implement this in a limited manner.”
. . .
The faithful were then asked to take part in an anointing ritual in which they should massage the forehead and hands of the person sitting next to them. Some go further and embrace each other whilst others kiss. The atmosphere gets more relaxed.
I appreciate good dancing, but, quite frankly, it’s disgraceful to see any dancing take place during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
. . .
I am morally certain the photos are authentic. I have the names of the dancers, but because they could very well be minors, I will not publish them. Nor will I show their faces. I think it’s time that (some) Catholics get their heads out of the sand.
. . .
A few additional details on the Mass: It was celebrated for the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate on June 16, 2007, at 10:30 a.m. The presider was Father Charles Faso, O.F.M.
YouVersion is a free online Bible that allows users to associate video, audio, images, text, tags, and links to other websites with any verse or series of verses in the Bible. Each piece of contributed content can be labeled as public or private, so the application can be used both as a personal study tool and a public expression of user-generated commentary. In addition to contributing content, Scripture can be organized by assigning user-defined “tags” to any verse of the Bible.
For users who are skeptical about whether the Bible has application for their lives, YouVersion provides a platform to learn from the experiences and perspectives of others from around the world in a non-threatening and easily navigated environment.
Dealing with sex in the pulpit is not an option. The faithful preacher of the Word can’t just skip over uncomfortable topics. He must preach what Scripture addresses. Furthermore, he certainly doesn’t want the church getting its view of sex from the world!
Steve Mathewson at the Preaching Today blog shares some good advice on how to preach on sex.
There’s a lot I could suggest when preaching texts which focus on sex, but I have one concern which eclipses all others: Sermons on sex must not be sermons on sex. Let me explain!
Sermons on texts like Proverbs 5 must be, first and foremost, sermons on God! These sermons must unpack the character of God and how it relates to God’s gift of sex. They must disclose how the gospel provides the ultimate answer to the expression of our sexuality.
The Gospel Coalition website has launched and has numerous helpful resources: articles, audio, and video from men like Bruce A. Ware, C. J. Mahaney, D. A. Carson, Thabiti Anyabwile, and Tim Keller.
.
The Christian Post 
Colin Adams asks Conrad Mbewe, pastor of 
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that 
Ed Stetzer has 
Someone pointed me to 
Here are two recent stories about scantily clad dancing women in church (the first Protestant, the second Roman Catholic) that you might hope are someone’s attempt at a bad joke, but unfortunately aren’t.
Dealing with sex in the pulpit is not an option. The faithful preacher of the Word can’t just skip over uncomfortable topics. He must preach what Scripture addresses. Furthermore, he certainly doesn’t want the church getting its view of sex from the world!
