Looking at Christ

Another great piece from Zim Okoli:  What I want us to see is that, planting churches is absolutely central to obeying the great commission. Now let me be clear. I’m not saying church planting is the only way to obey the Great Commission. For instance, one implication of the Great Commission is evangelism. Many Christians are committed to evangelism without being involved in church planting. Rather what I want us to see is that it's pretty hard to find a more fitting, more all-encompassing way to obey the Great Commission than planting churches . Going means mission by the church   Therefore go and make disciples… (Matt. 28:19) From the outset, Jesus’ intention is for his followers to be outreach-focused not inward-looking. Jesus is saying, Make disciples by going out on mission to the lost.   He already gave his disciples a taster of this back in Matthew 10. Back then he sent them out to preach the gospel to Jews, saying to them, “ As you go , proclaim this...

As Pentecost Sunday approaches I've been preparing to preach on Acts 2 and reading through the wider book. I was particularly struck by this verse: And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:2) For a disciple not to have heard about the Holy Spirit seems to be Not A Good Thing. For those of us who are concerned to emphasise (I think rightly) the priority of preaching Christ and him crucified and who see the Spirit’s role mainly as (to use J.I. Packer’s expression) a ‘ spotlight ministry ’, drawing the attention to Christ not himself, this stress on the Spirit in Acts is important to reckon with. Is there a danger that those of us who would think of ourselves as ‘conservative evangelicals’ might be so keen to distance ourselves from the excesses of hyper-Pentecostalism and unhelpful (or downright non-Christian) pneumatologies, that we might leave people with no...