This Week on Trans·formed (10/20)

Featured Articles on Trans·formed This Week

Are You Intimidated or Intimidating? “I don’t understand it. She said I was intimidating. I so wanted to minister to the women in my church. But after teaching the Bible study for 2 years, they didn’t ask me to teach it the next year. I don’t know why. All I know is that one woman said I was intimidating.”…What is intimidation? Is it intentional? How do we become intimidated? Who needs to change? Who needs to move into this? The one who is feeling intimidated or the one who is the “intimidator?” How do you know if you are intimating people? Is it your responsibility to change or theirs?.

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Other Posts of Interest from around the Web

• Surprising Benefits of Theological Vision for Ministry. As Tim Keller has put it in the introduction to Center Church, something is missing between the “hardware” of a church (theological foundation) and the software (ministry practice). They need a “middleware.” That “middleware” is what Keller calls a “theological vision for ministry.”

• Test Your Church. The questions are these: Is your church missional? How would you know? What are the elements that prove a church is missional? Lots of folks claim the word “missional.” Some claim it with a robust theology — John Franke, Darrell Guder, David Fitch — while others claim the word who are little more than disaffected evangelicals burnt out on the megachurch or evangelical church.

• Borrowed Light: Should We Baptize Upon Profession? No membership class.  No onlookers are mentioned.  No period of seeing whether or not this Ethiopian was serious about his profession.  All that we have in this context is a gospel explanation by Philip, a chariot driver, and “some water”.  Therefore, churches ought to follow Philip and baptize people upon profession.  Right?!?!

• Fact Checker: Do Faithful Christians Take the Bible Literally? One of these common misunderstandings is not even presented as a question, but an assumption. It typically goes something like this: “So Mr. Stanton, taking a literal view of the Bible as you do, please explain to me . . .”

• Is the Sabbath Still Relevant? Let’s not dictate Sabbath observance today.  The point of the Sabbath is a dress rehearsal for a future eternity of glad rest in God.  So, for now, every one of us can work out the details personally.  But in our frantic modern world, the Sabbath offers wisdom that has lasted since the beginning (Genesis 2:2-3).  It is not written on our calendars as much as we are built into its calendar.  It seems to be part of the God-created rhythm for weekly human flourishing.