Anabaptists fail to make disciples when we focus on outward behavior, have ethnocentric ecclesiastical communities, and lack biblical literacy.
Why Anabaptists Fail to Make Disciples
Tag: Gospel
Jesus: more than just an answer to our problems
If the hope of the gospel of Jesus was merely that everything bad would be made right, it would get depressing because everything bad doesn’t necessarily get made right.
Children, Obedience, and Mission Field #1
Someone recently submitted the question: “What is your view on child training?” Here’s my response…
How Can Anabaptists Spread the Gospel without Making Others Feel They Need to Become Like Them?
How can Anabaptists spread the gospel of Christ without making others think they need to become like us? Should their new disciples become Anabaptist? What’s the balance? Is what we do really important?
Americanism, Immigration, and a Low View of the Gospel
While Americans celebrate two hundred and forty-two years of independence and freedom today, thousands of immigrants are being held in “immigration detention.” How should Christians respond to this?
Reckless
What happened that causes us to wrestle with lust and pornography? Why is it that we experience pain and sometimes hurt others, ourselves? Because we have chosen to listen to another person’s voice instead of God’s.
But instead of giving us what we deserve (death), God has taken personal responsibility for restoring us back to His original design. He’s done something reckless, in our human way of looking at it. Without it, we have no hope.
What Happens When My Pastor Sins?
If your pastor got up in front of the church this coming Sunday and confessed he was gay, what would you do? What would you do if one of your church elders or deacons or small group leaders confessed to having an extra marital affair? Does it throw you for a loop even considering the possibility? Might you struggle to trust them, want their resignation, and feel disillusioned with God?
I don’t mean to make light of sin, and certainly don’t mean to justify sin going on at any level within the church. However, might I suggest that our gut reactions to such an idea exposes the overall response to sin within the church.
What Are Mennonite Millennials Looking For?
If I were to ask you what you are looking for in a church, would you know? If I were to ask you what you value, could you put words to it?
Many of us could probably come up with a few things like community, life, faithfulness to God’s Word, family, peace-making, brotherhood, and many other things. But those are all actually really vague. None of them differentiate one church from another.
What Charlottesville Can Teach Christians about Racism
If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ and you live in America, what happened in Charlottesville this past weekend ought to break your heart. Any kind of violence and favoritism should, especially racism.
Here’s what happened, and what we can learn from it.
Nonconformity: Does It Even Matter?
Because of grace, there are no excuses for sinful living. Only, God is for us. Not against us. Too often we live the Christian life expecting ourselves to be more perfect then even God expects us to be. As if holiness is something we are to accomplish before we have peace with Him. But that matter was taken care of by Christ on the Cross. We have peace, period. We can now live in relationship with God, and it is from that relationship we find the ability to live as He designed, to obey Him from the heart instead of obligation as they did under the Old Testament Law.
We still live in a fallen world, though, bound by a fallen nature. Living as He designed goes contrary to our nature. We have been grafted in—we’re not a part of the trunk that gave us root. It feels more natural to live without Him.
It is within this context that Paul is writing in Roman’s twelve.
What to Focus on When You Feel Held Back by Your Church
What if it is possible to move through frustrations with church and live vibrantly for Christ? What if there was a way to align our focus so that no matter what church situation we are dealing with, we can respond in loving, Christ-exalting, God-honoring ways? What if we could be free of the bondage of feeling held back? Free to live as Christ calls us to while not needlessly fracturing relationships?
When Children Become Well-Behaved Jerks
Children raised without the grace of God become well-behaved jerks.
When I was still at home and people would visit and compliment my parents on raising good kids, they would always say, “But for the grace of God! It’s nothing we did.” That never made sense to me. Dad and Mom were extremely intentional with how they raised us kids. What do they mean, “It’s nothing they did?”
Growing up in Christian culture, the burden of our parenting isn’t so much that our kids come to know Christ—although we would all verbalize that’s what we want. But in actuality it isn’t. What we really want is well-behaved, sensible kids with a passion for Christ that make us look like perfect parents. We want to raise our kids without needing to lean into the grace of God.
