There have been some fascinating and insightful responses to this series of posts on having a social impact. Here are some of them. Gary said: Jesus wasn't going around thinking "How can I have social impact in this town today?" Being about His Father's business included that aspect as well. My point was that if… Read More
Category: House church
Here is how Jesus characterized his own ministry in Luke 4: 17-21: And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT… Read More
Wolfgang Simson has done a great video on the Kingdom of God. It’s well worth watching, especially in the light of thinking through having a social impact.
What does it mean to demonstrate the Kingdom? In the last post I gave three examples of networks of organic/house churches (and one slightly more traditional church) that are changing lives, making disciples, but more than that, they are having a social impact. They are changing their communities, so much so that their cities are… Read More
The Lord has been challenging me over the last couple of weeks. It started a couple of weeks ago when I went to Exponential–not so much the conference itself (which was good) but through some of the stories I heard. I went straight from there to a conference run by the San Antionio Baptist Association where Tony… Read More
Should one ever go against principle? When it comes to baptizing people, I believe there are times when it is right to go against principle. Two of the principles I have mentioned in the last few blog posts are The person who leads someone to the Lord baptizes them Baptism is immediate Whenever baptism is… Read More
I was christened as a baby, but when I made a serious commitment to Christ, I decided to get rebaptized by immersion. As Pamela commented on a previous post, salvation consists of hearing the gospel, coming to faith in Jesus, repentance, and baptism. Acts 19: 3-5 says this about Paul's encounter with some new believers… Read More
I have led many workshops on the Great Commission, but one in particular stands out in my memory. As the group of twenty or so, many of whom had been believers for a long time, went through the passage (Matthew 28:18-20), the focus of the very interactive discussion kept returning to baptism. By the end,… Read More
After the last post I wrote on the Roman Road pattern of leading someone to Christ, Jared commented: "I wonder if we should be encouraging people to confess the "Romans Road", or focus more on following Jesus. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but which ever we lead with will (purposefully on inadvertently) be… Read More
"Tell me how to become a Christian!" Would everyone in your simple/organic church know how to lead someone to Christ using the Scriptures? If we want to see a multiplication of new disciples and therefore new churches, it is essential that ordinary believers know how to make a disciple, how to lead someone to Christ.… Read More