“The church, if it is to be anything, it is to be absolutely distinct from the culture, absolutely distinct from the world, absolutely distinct from unbelievers,” said prominent author and evangelical pastor John MacArthur. Speaking from the pulpit to thousands of fellow pastors at the Shepherds’ Conference, MacArthur underscored the biblical command not to be …
According to some prominent evangelical leaders, we’ve been fighting the wrong war. Protestants, Catholics, and other religious people should quit bickering over issues of heaven and hell and unite in the culture war. Wait a minute…what’s wrong with this picture? httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc8CrQQLXtc Sermon excerpt: A woman once wrote to me, she said she thought Christianity was …
Can the church fight apathy and materialism by feeding people’s appetite for entertainment? Evidently many in the church believe the answer is yes, as church after church jumps on the show-business bandwagon. It is a troubling trend that is luring many otherwise orthodox churches away from biblical priorities. Church buildings are being constructed like theaters. …
In a column published some years ago in a popular Christian magazine, a well-known preacher was venting his own loathing for long sermons. January 1 was coming, so he resolved to do better in the coming year. “That means wasting less time listening to long sermons and spending much more time preparing short ones,” he …
Is Pragmatism Really a Serious Threat? I am convinced that pragmatism poses precisely the same subtle threat to the church in our age that modernism represented nearly a century ago. Modernism was a movement that embraced higher criticism and liberal theology while denying nearly all the supernatural aspects of Christianity. But modernism did not first …
More than a decade ago, John MacArthur called modern churches to return to sound doctrine — we need to hear that call again. Christians historically have understood that their calling is to be in the world but not of the world. As Os Guinness pointed out in a perceptive series of articles on the church-growth …