Category: Church

The joy of church membership

The joy of church membership

The church that I serve has the wonderful privilege of welcoming five new members today. Five people will stand up in front of the congregation and confess that they trust in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. They will make promises to serve the local church with their gifts. These are very different people, in …

+ Read More

Are you keen to return to physical church, or is online church too comfortable?

Are you keen to return to physical church, or is online church too comfortable?

We all settle into routines and habits after a while. After the rapid changes we experienced at the start of this pandemic, for many of us life has settled into a different ‘normal’. This has meant working from home and experiencing church via online services and Zoom Bible studies. It felt strange to start with …

+ Read More

The Lord’s house deserves the best!

The Lord’s house deserves the best!

When I was a university student, I became a member of the local church that I had grown up in. I distinctly remember the first congregational meeting I ever attended. There was the kind of pressing, controversial issue found in churches everywhere: the organ had recently died. This was in a church that had (at …

+ Read More

Do you get wiser with age?

Do you get wiser with age?

Do you get wiser as you get older? Is it fair to say that, in general, those who are older are wiser? Instinctively, most of us would like to think this is true. And it often is! As we grow older, as we have more experiences and make more mistakes, we should learn things. And …

+ Read More

The now and the not yet

The now and the not yet

As Christians, we have many rich blessings right now, yet we long for the ultimate form of those blessings in the future. There are things we have now, and some things we don’t yet have. This tension between the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet’ can be seen in quite a few passages, including 1 Peter …

+ Read More

The great relevance of Old Testament history

The great relevance of Old Testament history

I plan the sermon series to be preached at All Nations months in advance. In fact, the books to be preached on are chosen in the previous year, with the detail added a few months before the sermon series is preached. That means that we intentionally work through the whole counsel of God over time …

+ Read More

A great evangelistic opportunity

A great evangelistic opportunity

In a world that doesn’t make sense anymore, people want answers and hope. That gives the church a wonderful opportunity to tell people about the hope that we have. Like most of our lives right now, the way we go about evangelism now needs to be a little different to before. The principle is the …

+ Read More

You need other people. Yes, even now.

You need other people. Yes, even now.

‘Social distancing’ will probably be the phrase of the year in 2020. Most of us could not have defined that term last year; now we see it in every news article and as warnings in every building we enter. We are encouraged to spend more time away from other people. As some satirical articles have …

+ Read More