"If Christian fellowship is considered to be shaking hands and asking about your church friends' week and then sitting down and singing and listening to preaching and then going home, how is that any different than going to the bar and seeing familiar faces over a couple of beers?"
Many pastors are intimidated by the thought of preaching all the way through an entire book of the Bible. Some fear that congregational excitement will be hard to sustain and that pastor and congregation will get bogged down in an extended series on a single book. Others may want to avoid the stereotype of the tired old expositor relentlessly trudging through questions of grammar and syntactical constructions. Many may even perceive the method as outdated.
Let’s suppose you’re a pastor and you’re preaching this Sunday. That’s six days away. To the man or woman in the pew, that seems like a long time, but it’s not. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Preacher’s Calendar. It goes like this...
The call for dialogue among Christians often comes from those with inter-faith sensibilities. And talking respectfully with people of other religions is a good thing, however, in many circles "dialogue" merely serves as an antidote to evangelism.
When you look at the disintegration of marriages, homes, families, relationships, morals, and society in general, do you wonder what is happening? Do you wonder why godly life principles, a sense of honor and moral restraint, graciousness, and propriety are slipping away?
John Piper explains how our feelings are either good or bad depending on how they relate to God.
Using a bookends motif, Bridges and Bevington show how justification and sanctification can help you overcome guilt and self-righteousness, develop the motivation to grow, be assured of God's love, and bring about lasting change in your life.