The art of giving good feedback
Matt MacGregor
Date posted: 3 Feb 2025
Providing good feedback to the musicians who serve your church is essential. It helps nurture their God-given gifts and ensures that their service is a blessing and not a burden to the church.
This is not an easy task, nor is it only the responsibility of leaders. With the help of the Proverbs, here are three (conveniently alliterative) principles to help all of us in the church to get this right.
a Jewish Christian perspective
To the Jew first
Joseph Steinberg
Date posted: 31 Jan 2025
As a leader in Christian mission to Jewish people, I often hear people quote Romans 1:16 where Paul writes, ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.’
But recently I was asked to speak from Paul’s corresponding words a few verses later in 2:9 where he writes: ‘There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.’
everyday evangelism
Six reasons to put Jesus at the heart of evangelism
Glen Scrivener
Date posted: 31 Jan 2025
The heart and soul of evangelism is lifting up Jesus as Lord. As I said last month: ‘Jesus is Lord’ represents bullseye. This is what we aim to communicate. And when our friend receives this message, they have received the sum and substance of the gospel.
So last month I made the theological case for putting Jesus at the centre of our evangelism. This month I want to rejoice in the simplicity of it all. It is wonderfully clarifying to lay other things to one side and simply make much of Jesus. Let me give you six liberating implications:
Don’t apologise for apologetics
Toby Pitchers
Date posted: 30 Jan 2025
In his 2013 book The End of Apologetics, Myron Penner provocatively asserts that ‘apologetics itself might be the single biggest threat to genuine Christian faith that we face today’.
Amongst other criticisms, Penner renounces Christianity’s intellectual defence (in Greek, ‘apologia’) as threatening to value reason over revelation and failing to communicate how the gospel’s truth attaches to a wider way of living. Significantly, this position is not confined to abstract academic debate, but articulates the wider conviction of many Christians today – inevitably shaping how the church converses with the wider culture.
everyday theology
Even our trials are in His kind hands
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 29 Jan 2025
‘Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings...’ (1 Pet. 4:12–13).
Peter can urge us to rejoice in our sufferings not because he’s a religious masochist but because he knows: Christ is the firstborn, our forerunner, and where He goes, we follow. He is our Head, and like in a birth, the body must follow where the head goes. This is the pathway through suffering to glory.
the pastor's toolkit
Streamlining your sermon: what to keep, what to ditch
Martin Salter
Date posted: 28 Jan 2025
'Friends, I’m sure you’ll agree that once a robust postmillennial eschatology is established, the implications for ecclesial and missional praxis become self-evident'... said no preacher ever – hopefully!
One of the challenges for many preachers is how we package up all the stuff we’ve learned into digestible communication. It’s easy for an excited preacher to forget that most of the people in front of us haven’t read Calvin’s Institutes and (weird I know) probably don’t want to!
3 books to help your children know God's love
Catherine MacKenzie
Date posted: 27 Jan 2025
All You Need is Love is a single released by the Beatles in 1967. It has become a societal mantra in the subsequent years, giving the impression that this emotion was some amazing post-war invention, discovered by hippies and let loose on the world by the new generation. But the reality is that love has been idolised by poets for millennia.
February is that month out of the calendar where love seems to go a bit nuts. All of a sudden it’s festooned in ribbons and smothered in pink.
earth watch
Why aren't Christians leading on climate change?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 27 Jan 2025
Donald Trump is now President of the most economically powerful nation on the planet and – the President-elect is self-avowedly no friend of God’s creation.
He has signed an order to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and has pledged to roll back Biden’s clean energy law, the Inflation Reduction Act. And he’s doubling down on oil and gas: ‘Drill, baby, drill’.
sharing Christ with Muslims
Sharing Jesus with Muslims: The key is relationship
Hisham E.M.
Date posted: 25 Jan 2025
Have you ever had the opportunity to share your testimony or explain the gospel to a Muslim? If so, you have probably realised that simply presenting the essential points of the gospel is not enough to win them over.
Booklets such as The Bridge, The Four Spiritual Laws, Two Ways of Living and Knowing God Personally are very effective tools for explaining the gospel to Muslims. However, be prepared. Once you’ve explained using these materials, you’ve just begun. The Lord is sovereign, He can do anything. But I have rarely heard of a Muslim praying to receive Christ immediately after hearing about the Four Laws. There are important questions about the very nature of God, about Christ and about the Bible that require serious reflection and that a Muslim needs to understand.
Trump 2.0: Understanding why people support him
Jonathon Macdonald
Date posted: 24 Jan 2025
Many British Christians are terrified of any association with Trump-supporting American Evangelicals.
I remember reading an article recently which mentioned an English congregation who had gone as far as removing the word ‘evangelical’ from their name to avoid giving the impression the church was too closely related to those west of the Atlantic. There are even some for whom this fear of association descends into an antipathy bordering on disgust.
Trump 2.0: A concerned evangelical view
Martyn Whittock
Date posted: 24 Jan 2025
The return of Donald Trump to the White House should be a matter of concern; not panic, but concern.
It should, at this point, be stated clearly that my contention is not based on an expectation that US electors (including evangelical Christians) should become Democrats. Nor that there is something inherently wrong with the historic Republican Party. My case is that the matter is rather simpler: there is something inherently wrong with Donald Trump and the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement (which has, in effect, become the Republican Party). I would also argue that there is something significantly wrong with the US section of the international evangelical movement; and this is shown in its deep commitment to Trump and to MAGA.
the ENd word
How vulnerable was Jesus?
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 23 Jan 2025
One of the habits we’ve developed as a church staff team is to have a book that we commit to reading and discussing as part of our weekly staff meeting. Normally we opt for something theological but occasionally, to keep things lively, we go a bit rogue.
Recently we’ve been on one of our excursions into left field and have been working through Brené Brown’s bestselling book on the subject of vulnerability, Daring Greatly. In all honesty, to employ a clerical metaphor, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg of a book.
culture watch
Faithfulness and treachery: Why ‘The Traitors’ grabs us
Gwilym Tudur
Date posted: 22 Jan 2025
The first day of 2025 saw the launch of a new season of the hit BBC television show The Traitors. In this psychological game show hosted by Claudia Winkelman, 22 contestants are sent to a Scottish castle to compete against each other for a prize of £120,000.
It is, however, a game show with a twist: some contestants are ‘Faithfuls’ while others are ‘Traitors’. Each night, the Traitors figuratively ‘murder’ a contestant, while the Faithfuls seek to ‘banish’ a Traitor. With its unexpected twists and colourful characters, the third season of The Traitors promises to be gripping.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones: From Doctor to Pastor
Ray Gaydon
Date posted: 22 Jan 2025
Martyn Lloyd-Jones was born in Cardiff on 20th December 1899 and died in London on St David’s Day 1981.
His early years were spent at Llangeitho in Cardiganshire and in his youth attended Daniel Rowlands Chapel in the village. His father, like so many others in Wales at that time, relocated to London in 1914 seeking a better life for himself and his family. A couple of years later, Martyn began medical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and, at the age of 23, earned a Doctorate in Medicine and became the chief clinical assistant to the King’s physician, Sir Thomas Horder.
Lessons from the 'Rich Fool'
David Shepherd
Date posted: 15 Jan 2025
It was at the height of Jesus’ ministry that a man asked Him to arbitrate a family dispute over inheritance. Back then, most religious leaders were extremely eager to turn such grievances into a cause célèbre from which a new legal precedent could be established.
Even in modern society, there is still no shortage of religious leaders from all faiths who are keen to promote their current affairs punditry, while making moral pronouncements that enhance their social justice credentials.
The gym is the new church
Simon Lennox
Date posted: 9 Jan 2025
Every year, as the clock strikes midnight on 1 January, we are bombarded with familiar messages of ‘new year, new me.’
Self betterment has become an inevitable part of our culture, with methods of improving yourself ever increasing in both volume and popularity. 79% of New Year resolutions are centred on fitness, with half of those surveyed stating that their top resolution is to exercise. Yet just 31 days later, the gyms have quietened down, with 80% losing the motivation to stick to their goals. But as Christians, what if faith and fitness are more similar, and more important, than we previously imagined?
pastoral care
How should leaders lead?
Steve Midgley
Date posted: 8 Jan 2025
Leadership is having a hard time.
Appalling abuses of power in Christian circles sit within a broader suspicion of power and authority. Some speak of a crisis in recruitment to pastoral ministry. Seeing the demands of leadership, and those who fail, perhaps it is no surprise that people aren’t clamouring to join up.