Responsibilities & Qualifications of Church Leaders Thus far, this series has presented leadership plans along with insights about church leaders. RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHURCH LEADERS Part 6 highlighted common characteristics of believers growing in Christ. For example, all believers are spiritually gifted to minister in ways that build up the Body of Christ and bring glory to God. While ministering…
Singular Leaders in the Bible This series deals with New Testament church leadership. The New Testament leadership plan can be described as a plurality of elders or, with similar accuracy, a plurality of overseers/bishops or a plurality of shepherds/pastors. As Part 2 of this series indicated, the words for overseer/bishop (episkopos), elder (presbuteros), and shepherd/pastor (poimen) are used interchangeably in the New Testament…
Church Leadership: Plurality of Elders This is the third article in a series on Church Leadership. Part 1 gave an overview of the various forms of church leadership in use today. Part 2 focused on a church’s servant-leaders and the three Greek words that describe them. In our previous study, we saw that episkopos (overseer/bishop), presbuteros (elder) and poimen (shepherd/pastor) all refer to…
The church is described in various ways in the New Testament. One of these metaphors is a temple, a dwelling of God in the Spirit that is described in Ephesians 2:19-22. In verse 19 the church is pictured as a family or community. This partially describes the closeness God intends for His people, but the picture of the…
Biblical Perspectives in Everyday Life Every time we sing the song, Here I Am to Worship, I choke up on the “bridge” that says, “I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross.”1 That perspective is so true. Try as I might I will never know in this lifetime what it cost…
From gotQuestions.org The Romans Road to salvation is a way of explaining the Good News of salvation using verses from the New Testament Book of Romans. It is a simple yet powerful method of explaining why we need salvation, how God provided salvation, how we can receive salvation, and what are the results of salvation. The first…
Excerpted from Forgiveness: The Possible Impossibility Forgiveness is, literally, at the heart of Christianity. Its meaning is not difficult to understand, but “to forgive” as a way of life is not something one does naturally. Forgiveness means “to cancel a debt” or “to set aside.” It is not based on feelings but, instead, involves a choice…
Excerpted from Forgiveness: The Possible Impossibility Forgiveness is at the heart of Christianity and means “to cancel a debt” or “to set aside.” The awesome demonstration of God’s love—the sacrifice of Jesus—is the perfect example of forgiveness that sets the standard by which God’s children are to forgive others. Ephesians 4:32, Be kind to one another,…
Jesus reduced life’s significant priorities to just two: Loving God—with all your heart, soul, and mind—and loving others, as you already do love yourself (Matthew 22:36-38). Contrary to an avalanche of humanistic propaganda, there is no third commandment to “love yourself” in this key passage of Scripture. Perhaps surprisingly to some, our inherent “love of self” does not…
Friendships and families tend to fragment when the glue holding them together is feeling-based “love.” This type of “love” takes little effort and requires almost no attention, since it is self-oriented and dependent on others for personal gratification. In other words, feeling-oriented love is linked to what we believe others think about us, how others…