Preaching (Page 2)

Preaching (Page 2)

The Role Of The Local Church Within Deprived Communities (1)

Note: This is an updated version of a previous post. In his book, Generous Justice, Tim Keller states: “All I know is, if I don’t care about the poor, if my church doesn’t care about the poor, that’s evil.” Jesse Johnson, writing an article for The Cripplegate Blog, has a somewhat different…

Making Disciples By Church Planting

I found this extremely helpful article in The Briefing written by Richard Coekin. He makes some great points about smaller churches reaching a wider geographical spread and this is certainly some of the thinking behind our 20Schemes project. We are not going to grow mega churches through this initiative (although God in His grace may intervene) but we do want to see small…

Will We Be Spirit Filled As We Preach Or Hear God’s Word Today?

Joe Lechner, from Sovereign Grace Ministries has written a couple of articles recently on the role of the Holy spirit in the life of the preacher and in the life of the congregational listener. The former can be found here and the latter here. In it he reminds us of the following, powerful quote…

Where Will Our Future leaders Come From?

At Niddrie we will be launching a new church planting initiative within the next month. We are calling it “20Schemes” and further details will follow. We are launching this project in partnership with a church in Kentucky called Bardstown Christian Fellowship, itself planted by a Scotsman, Matthew Spandler-Davison. We are also benefitting hugely from the…

The Church & The Surprising Offence of God’s Love

I’ve been laid up in bed for a week after an accident and I pulled this book off my bookshelf, largely because I’m due to preach on the theme of God’s love in the coming week. Let me start by saying that this is quite a chunky book, considering the strap line: ‘Reintroducing…

How Small Churches Can Help Missions

There is a great article here published on The Gospel Coalition website here. Missions, training and church planting, particularly, do not have to be the domain of large churches. We are one of the smallest churches in the city (60 members) and I would hazard a guess that we offer one of the largest training places in Scotland for our type of ministry (9 full time…

The Church (The Gospel Made Visible)

So, I am just back from my summer holidays and I had a bit of a 9marks love fest when it came to holiday reading. I have just picked this one off the top of my pile and I shall be reviewing each book, in no particular order, over the coming weeks. For the uninitiated to this site, this is how I review books at Niddrie Pastor. 1. Content. Is it biblical? 2. Application. Is…

The Gospel is More Than a Story

“Christian faith is not primarily about arguing over right beliefs and doctrines, it is about letting the story of God’s grace become our story and shape our lives.” I am sure many of us (who read at least) have heard/read some version of that in recent years. “Storying” is very much in vogue in Evangelical circles right now. There is an…