Welcome Gettys, Matt Papa, and Matt Boswell
Today we are fortunate to be joined once again by Keith and Kristyn Getty and their band. But this time they join us with two guests: Matt Papa and Matt Boswell, two writers on the Getty’s Hymn Writing Team.
Mourning The Loss of a Father
Some of you don’t have many photos with your dad because he was always taking the pictures. In my case, my dad just didn’t like his picture taken and he was stubborn about it. That’s one thing about him I’ll strangely miss. He loved anchovies on his pizza. That’s another thing.
Parental Discipline With A Destination
There is more to parenting than discipline and there is more to say about discipline than we we explored last Sunday. Nevertheless, discipine in the home is of profound importance for our children’s earthly and heavenly good. It is God’s prescribed means to both and we neglect it to peril of our children.
Meet Sarah Asire, Our New Women’s Ministry Director
On behalf of our elders, I am thrilled to introduce you to Sarah Asire, our new Director of Women’s Ministry. In this interview I ask Sarah a few questions so we can get to know her. Along the way, let’s all get some insight into the how and the why of our women’s Bible study.
A New Pastoral Role and A Vision for Deep Discipleship and Pastor Training
Discipleship is all the rage. Commercials, sports commentary, and social media feeds teach us the story of the world, what we should believe, and how we should live. Sometimes I’ll hear this comment: with all of the indoctrination we and our children receive through the week, what can a one hour sermon do? I’ve thought that. Maybe you’ve said it yourself.
A Call to Prayer During Ramadan
According to Muslim tradition, in the year 610 Allah began a twenty-three year process of dictating the Quran to Muhammad. The essence of the story is that Muhammad, in his quest for knowledge of Allah, repeatedly visited a cave near the city of Mecca for times of solitude. During one of those visits, Allah sent an angel to begin the dictation. That first visit came in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, Ramadan.
Why We Are Against Abortion
On Friday, June 24, at 10:10 AM the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Row vs. Wade, reversing the legalization of abortion on demand across the United States. The issue of abortion is now the legal responsibility of our state legislatures. If you were alive on September 11, 2001, you remember where you were when the planes struck the towers. That was a bad day. The striking down of Roe marks a good day and a one to remember.
How Does The Gospel Shape Our Gathering?, Part 3: Our Design Workflow
We’ve moved in this series from the fixed and permanent things to the more flexible things. Every church should sing and preach the Word. But churches can go about that differently. I’ve known of churches where the congregation requests songs on the spot. That’s not what we do but that’s one way to do it. In this post I’ll outline how we design our worship services.
How Does The Gospel Shape Our Gathering?, Part 2: Our Liturgical Form
We’re using the metaphor of church architecture as a way of thinking about the design of our Lord’s Day services. We rightly put care into how we design a church facility. In fact, at Heritage we’re entering a master planning process for our own building. We’re talking about the parts and the flow of our building.
How Does the Gospel Shape Our Gathering?, Part 1: A Theological Framework
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_padding=”0px|||”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_padding=”0px|||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_image src=”https://heritagegvl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/akira-hojo-_86u_Y0oAaM-unsplash-1-scaled.jpg” title_text=”akira-hojo-_86u_Y0oAaM-unsplash” align=”center” align_tablet=”center” align_phone=”” align_last_edited=”on|desktop” _builder_version=”4.7.7″ max_width=”85%” module_alignment=”center” custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_padding=”0px|||”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″] This is the first in a three-part series, How Does The Gospel Shape Our Gathering? Read, “Part 2: Our Liturgical Form,” and, “Part 3: Our Design Workflow.” **** You might have seen […]
You Can’t Join Us On Livestream. Say What?
Settle in and allow me to explain. Greg Gilbert wrote a helpful piece for pastors a little over a year ago. Some of his concluding words have stuck with me: This is a hard year to be a pastor. There’s the pandemic. There’s the frustration, for many of us, of not being able to gather with the church as normal. There’s the vaguely ridiculous prospect of preaching to a congregation whose faces you can’t see because they’re all wearing masks. There’s the livestream you launched literally two weeks after you publicly called down God’s own curses on yourself if you ever consented to a “video venue.”
The Miracle of Giving and Why We Stopped Passing the Plate
We haven’t passed the plate in over a year, yet our lights are on, our pastors are paid, and giving has increased. Let’s talk about that. COVID gave our elders an opportunity to test-drive something we had been pondering informally for some time: giving without plates. How has it gone? Just fine. Actually, measured in terms of the church’s generosity, it’s gone great.
Looking for Shepherds: Biblical Qualifications for Eldership
One way to know how much God treasures his people is to listen to what he says to our leaders. Here’s Paul’s words to the elders at Ephesus: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”
How Not to Lose Yourself (and Your Soul) In A Crowd
I’ve been thinking about crowds lately. There are a few reasons for that. We keep seeing them on the news. We feel the effects of them in our feeds. The crowding out of our ability to think for our selves—or think at all—is one reason why a half dozen friends have told me they recently dialed back or jumped out of social media altogether.
New eBook: Thinking Theologically about Racial Tensions
Our elders recognize that there is a need to offer biblical instruction on the topic of race. This is not because we believe that we are demonstrating sinful thoughts or attitudes on this topic as a church. Not hardly. Rather, it is because this topic—filled as it is with human beings, human history, and human conflict—deserves nothing less than our best biblical thinking.
Your Journey Through The Psalms: Where to Begin
If you’ve been in church long enough, you’ve probably been told to, “open your Bibles to the book of Psalms, right in the middle of your Bible.” Measured by chapters, Psalms is the longest book in our Bibles so it’s not hard to find. In it are the prayers, hymns, and laments of our ancestors to our great God. It’s filled with familiar lines that we rightly recall: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,” or, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (1:1; 23:1).
Reading the Bible in 2021
The original title for this post was, “Reading the Bible in 2071.” I mistyped the date. But then, that’s actually how some of us might approach Bible reading. It’s something we’ll get to later. A reading plan can help with this procrastination. Remember Jesus’ words, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
Thanksgiving, 2020
Thankfulness isn’t the banner most of us would naturally fly over 2020. Only a few things come to mind: a pandemic, violence, and an election season that exposed so many of our nation’s contradictions. Even Thanksgiving is at least legally curtailed for some brothers and sisters in other states.
Give to God What Is God’s: Rule 3, Reserve Your Greatest Energies for the Most Lasting Society, the Church
Political engagement takes energy. Mental energy, emotional energy, and an investment of time. As it should. Our heavenly citizenship is good for many things, including good citizenship here, for human government is part of heaven’s plan for our welfare on earth. That hardly means everyone who takes Christ’s name understands what they are doing with it. It just means that the world and everything in it is God’s, and that includes the buildings in the District of Colombia.
Give to God What Is God’s: Rule 2, Engage in the Political Process as a Christian
Jesus is never not Lord for the Christian. To be a Christian is to confess Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords forever. Which includes every second of time and every sector of life, from what’s under our own roof to the voting booth. To confess Christ King of Kings, after all, is to make a political statement. Our lives are his and our government is his. He is over this whole operation.
Give to God What Is God’s: Rule 1, Understand What You’re Doing as an American
To be a good Christian you have to be a good American. Let me explain. The Bible says that God put you right where you are. “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). Assuming you are reading this in America as an American, that means God put you inside the borders of America to be an American for this period of time.
Give to God What Is God’s: Three Rules for (Political) Engagement
Don’t talk about religion and politics, they say. Maybe that’s why the Sanhedrin asked Jesus a question that involved both, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” (Mk. 12:14). Caesar’s image was on the coin, which repulsed the Jews. The Sanhedrin had Jesus cornered. If Jesus insisted on the tax, then he was a religious idolater. If Jesus undermined the legitimacy of the tax, then he was a political revolutionary. Jesus’ reply was brilliant: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mk. 12:17). In one sentence Jesus managed to talk about both religion and politics. He didn’t even get himself in trouble. In fact, with that one line he got himself out of trouble.
How We Appoint Elders Together
If you hang around Heritage long enough, you’re going to hear about elders. You’ll hear us talk about how there are three terms used interchangeably in the New Testament for this office: elder, pastor, and overseer. You’ll hear us talk about how some of our elders are paid and some are unpaid, some have special assignments or expertise, but our elders lead us together.
An Election Season Prayer to Heaven’s High King
Once a month I will pray what we’ll call “A Prayer for the Church” in our Lord’s Day gathering. Periodically I will post this prayer to this blog. The following prayer is adapted from the Prayer for the Church, from Sunday, October 4, 2020.
A Tragic Death and a Prayer for Peace
Dear Father, A man died on the street in Minneapolis under the knee of a police officer and we saw it with our eyes. Our nation is in turmoil and our cities are on fire. Oh Lord, there are many emotions we should feel right now: sadness, anger, and grief. There are many things we should pray for this morning—for your justice, your peace, and your healing. There are also many people we should pray for.
Hardship and Church Health: How This Could Be Good for Us
A few months ago I didn’t know the first thing about the coronavirus. Now, everyone knows the first thing about it. It’s bad. Let’s start there. There are some real ways in which this whole thing is bad for us. It’s a killing machine, especially for our older population. That’s bad. We can’t gather and that’s bad. The economy is halting and that will be bad in ways that we are only starting to understand. Yesterday at 5 p.m., one of our members let me know he was not available Friday night. A friend was getting married. By 6 p.m., he followed up to let me know the wedding was canceled. Just try to imagine being that couple.
Coronavirus, Community, and the Cross
Dear Heritage Bible Church,
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. May the peace of Christ rule in our hearts even as the coronavirus rules the airwaves and, to a good extent, our lives for a season.
Yesterday evening we sent you a simple communication regarding our plans for services and ministry programming at Heritage in light of the COVID-19 virus National Emergency.
The Grace and Grind of Shepherding Groups: What We Saw in Your Homes
On Sunday evening our family concluded our tour of all thirty-one Shepherding Groups. It took two years. We’re human beings and church members first, so we’re eager for the regular grind and grace of one group. But we’re glad we did this. Let me tell you what we saw. 1. We saw you open your homes. […]
