Category Archives: Evangelism

The strategy of God

Pastoral Ministry

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Just what should we be doing in Christian ministry? Do our churches need a vision document, a mission statement or a strategic plan? Phillip Jensen says that strategy is important, but our job is not to work it out; God has already done that.

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Preaching hell to depressed teens

Up front

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I’ve been thinking about hell quite a bit recently—not because I enjoy it, because I’m obsessed with morbid subjects or because I’m reading Peter Bolt’s Living with the Underworld. I’ve been thinking about it because I was warned recently that we should beware of how we teach the subject of ‘hell’ and God’s wrath to teenagers. Many of them, so the argument goes, are prone to low self-esteem, depression and suicidal thoughts. They have no trouble believing that they are sinners, and that God is ‘mad’ at them. So we should beware of manipulating their feelings with lurid and excessive depictions of hell, which would compound their misery rather than helping them to understand God’s grace and love. In addition, the New Testament’s way is not to subject already shamed individuals to dreadful and imaginative descriptions of God’s wrath. (more…)

Why we must be seeker sensitive

Up front, Sola Panel

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The phrase ‘seeker sensitive’ has dropped out of fashion recently. For those who haven’t heard the phrase, the idea of a ‘seeker sensitive service’ is a church gathering that focuses on the desires and needs of ‘spiritual seekers’—non-Christians with a thirst for knowing more about God. It aims to do everything possible to make it easy for them to come to church and enjoy the experience so that they come back and learn about God. Yet the Willow Creek Association, for example, once a champion of the ‘seeker sensitive’ model of church,1 has recently had a major rethink of some of its key values. In their book Reveal: Where Are You? by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, they speak frankly about the failures of an approach that was too heavily oriented towards growth in numbers rather than growth in maturity. (more…)

The Facebook of truth

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In our churches and in our outreach, questions of ‘truth’ don’t seem so important any more. Is this is a loss, an irrelevance or an opportunity? Tony Payne reviews two significant books on this subject by David F Wells.

Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, David F Wells, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2006, 339pp (more…)