The Gospel and the City in Genesis is part of a series of short articles written by my brother John on his blog, the gospel first. He has now reached chapter 21 in the series which you can find here. I think it is an outstanding series but do not claim to be objective. See Read more

I’m at ETS in Atlanta this week and enjoying the time of theological reflection and seeing old friends. Over 2500 registered. It may be the largest ever for ETS. The theme this year is Justification by Faith. Wednesday night Tom Schreiner spoke on the subject in critiquing N. T. Wright’s views. Wright speaks on Friday Read more

Here's a short 18 minute video on urban mission. Keller gives 10 characteristics of contextual churches. You can also download his urban mission paper. Here's a quote from that paper. "Biblically, an experience of saving grace through evangelism leads to radical sharing of wealth and helping the needy. And when the world sees this sharing, Read more

I've been working my way through the audio now available from the recent DBTS conference on “Church, Kingdom, Mission: Understanding and Assessing the Missional Church Movement.” I was surprised to hear my name pop up on Dave Doran’s general session 3 on “The Gospel and Mission” (56:12) in which he references an article I wrote Read more

It is often pointed out that the Apostle Paul did not explicitly attack slavery in his day but regulated relationships between Christian masters and slaves. Closer to our times, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest theologians ever, was a slave owner. It appears that “though he defended the institution of slavery, Read more

Missional churches often use "kingdom" language. We hear of "proclaiming the kingdom,” “extending the kingdom," or "kingdom values." This has morphed in the minds of some, critics and advocates alike, to "establishing the reign of God over society."  In my opinion this would be an inaccurate kingdom articulation. I prefer to say with N. T Read more

Churches which provide meals or other services for the poor and homeless are open to the criticism of being mercenary.  To be mercenary has the idea of doing something merely for gain, for self-interest. Imagine mercenary churches which make poor people listen to a message before they eat.  The underlying motive might be that the church hopes to Read more

The Lord gave us a great day yesterday in allowing Grace Church to baptize three believers. One of those baptized was a young lady I mentioned in an earlier blog who had recently been saved. One of the men baptized we had met at a homeless outreach several months ago. He now serves alongside of Read more

Church planters must come to grips with the reality that there is no guarantee of success in church planting if by success they think of having a large, self-supporting church with its own facilities, etc. God measures success differently and considers faithfulness the measure of ministry success. I have witnessed the birth of churches which have folded Read more

Someone asked me last week a question I've often heard: "Who is your target group?" By that they were asking if we trying to reach students (since we are in University City), middle-class professionals, Afro-Americans (since we are in West Philadelphia), immigrants, etc. My standard response is that at Grace Church we don't have a Read more