Featured Articles on Trans·formed This Week
The One Minute Gospel: Helpful Tool or Tragic Mistake (Marc Cortez): Almost every evangelism training I’ve ever been through has emphasized the importance of being able to share the gospel in one minute or less. The assumption seems to be that this is something every mature Christian should be able to do. And, to be honest, I agree. But with some significant reservations. From the right perspective, the One Minute Gospel can be very helpful. But far too often the One Minute Gospel leads us into a number of critical errors.
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Leadership Direction: Life Assessment (Chad Hall): As a leader in church, business, family, community or wherever, how do you know what to do next? If you’re especially spiritual, perhaps God will tell you clearly. In my experience (firsthand as a leader and secondhand by working with other leaders), most direction does not come from God in a direct and unmistakable way. Instead, it comes through a process of prayer, reflection, planning and consideration. In a nutshell, it is a process that starts with assessment of your life.
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What Do We Do with the Bible? (part 4) We Learn to Trust (Bill Mounce): But here is the wonderful cycle that happens. You commit yourself to Jesus. You read his words, meditate on them, even memorize some of them, and ask God to help you obey it. Some times this is hard because God’s ways are not our ways, and much of what he says will conflict with the teaching of this world. But we have committed ourselves to him, to walk the path, and so we ask for God to help us understand and obey. And as we obey, the truth of the Bible is validated in our experience; and as it is validated, we start to trust.
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Other Articles on Trans·formed This Week
Other Posts of Interest from around the Web
- What to Say When Someone Says, “The Bible Has Errors”: Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffee shop who said, “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?
- 5 Reasons Your Pastor May Not Be Leading Well: I frequently hear from staff ministers and church members who are concerned about the direction of their church. The number one issue churches appear to face is that of leadership; specifically pastoral leadership. In fact, many would say if the pastor isn’t leading well, the church will likely suffer at some level.
- Multi-ethnic Worship Gatherings: As our English-speaking multi-ethnic congregation has embraced a mission to reach non-English speakers in our community and include them in our body as members upon a credible profession of faith and believer’s baptism, one of the principal questions we have faced has been, “How do we gather for worship?” To be honest, we are still answering that question.
- Rural Ministry Is Not Second Rate: Young pastors or seminarians often ask me for advice on what kind of early ministry experience to seek in order to best grow in skill and wisdom as a pastor. They often are surprised when I tell them to consider being a ‘country parson’ — namely, the solo pastor of a small church, many or most of which are in non-urban settings. Let me quickly emphasize the word ‘consider.’ I would never insist that everyone must follow this path. Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about. It was great for me.
- Decentralized Preaching: In no way do I want to limit the ministry of the best and brightest men we have available for gospel ministry today. Please don’t hear me saying that. But I do think that in most “normal” churches and church plants, it is wise to have more than one regular preacher and deliberately to raise up cadres of preachers and teachers that can rightly handle the Word in all situations where it should be proclaimed.
- It’s Not True: American Evangelicals Do Not, in Fact, Behave as Badly as Everyone Else: Evangelicals–and here’s the key point: according to any definition that John Wesley or Billy Graham would recognize–do not, in fact, behave as badly as the American population at large. They do not, in fact, have extramarital sex as often or abort babies as often….They do not experience the same levels of marital unhappiness and divorce. They do not give to charity or volunteer at the same low levels as the population at large. And so on, and so on.
- 6 Myths of Success: I grew up in a performance-centered community. I was affirmed and valued at the level of my performance. The better I performed, the more others loved me. I worked hard at athletics to be of some value to someone—to anyone. I worked hard in ministry for the same reason. My parents are hard workers. My dad is 82 and still employed. I asked him why he didn’t just quit since he didn’t need the money. He said, in his gruff voice, “A man isn’t worth anything if he doesn’t work.” That illuminated a lot of my own proclivities for me.
About Marc Cortez
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