Growing In Grace

In an article on Youth Ministry Dave Wright said, "... we lost sight of the Great Commission, deciding instead to make converts of many and disciples of few." I could not agree with this statement more. Except I see it as being for more indicative of Church in general. If we forget or ignore what Paul says in Romans 10:17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ (the gospel), then we turn salvation into something that can happen willy nilly, and frankly, in doing this we have removed the very power of the gospel that Paul was writing about in Romans 1:16! Sadly many churches today have substituted the 'sinner's prayer' or 'standing to be saved' for the preaching of the gospel. But lest we be deceived,  no one has ever been saved from saying the sinners prayer or from standing at the end of a church service when a generic message about a few Bible verses have been taught . That is simply not the way that God has designated that peop

Many of you have heard the saying, "Essentials, unity; non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." I think this is a great saying because we must recognize that there are numerous essential and non-essential doctrines in the Christian faith. But I think that this saying is even more important when we consider Jesus' prayer for His disciples in John 17:23, "...that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me." For Jesus this issue of unity among his followers was far more important than them just getting along. Notice that the unity of believers is to have evangelistic implications, Jesus prays, "...so that the world may know that You (the Father) sent Me..." I was stunned to read recently that there are currently around 38,000 'denominations' in the United States! While I realize that many denominations have come about because of the range of non-essential issues,