DailyEdify.com

I was raised in a home where regular, frequent attendance of church services was the norm. I was in church by the time I was just a week old, and I attended faithfully from that point forward. It was just a…

Those churches that sprang from American soil have avoided certain aspects of the feudal model, but unfortunately many have been co-opted by another system. Whereas Constantine poured the early Christian movement into the mold of Roman patronage, many American…

It was easy to speak boldly that my ministry was all about faithfulness to God and His Word. But when humility gave birth to brutal honesty, I freely began to admit that there was undoubtedly this constant undercurrent of…

I wonder if the American church is setting itself up for failure? If church structure— which is geared toward meeting every need, developing everyone spiritually and organizing all inward and outward ministry — results in a 90 percent failure…

Do people want Christianity to be cool? What happens when churches become too driven by the desire to be trend-savvy and culturally relevant? Can a church balance hipster credibility within an orthodox tradition? Further time will tell whether the…

It’s been a while since we had a Sunday Sermon post. Today, we have Rick McKinley sharing a vision for how the church makes the city and displays the gospel through its participation in being and building the…

In 1525, one of the first people to translate the Bible into English, William Tyndale, translated the word ekklesia as congregation. However, in 1611 the translators of the King James Version of the Bible chose to completely drop the Greek meaning of ekklesia and to…

Nothing like a little satire to point out the flaws of something. This clever little video uses the genius of satire to expose the questionable assumptions behind children’s church and/or Sunday school. Perhaps the cons of age-segregated worship outweigh…

People are no more lost now than they have ever been, and Jesus is no less Lord now than He will ever be. We dare not cower in our churches as though God has lost anything. The only decision handed…

You’ll see Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Evangelists, and Pastors but you won’t find hide nor hair of a worship leader. Being a full time worship leader I had a bit of an identity crises when I flipped through the pages…

Churchianity:  a mirage (of the kingdom of God taught and exemplified by Jesus as unfolded in the New Testament) that is always forming both near and around the new covenant community of Jesus by perpetual, generational layers of religious…

“I have never yet known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord’s people were divided.” Like D.L. Moody, neither have I. Instead, most of us probably have seen too often how disunity hinders the Spirit’s work in the church and damages…

There is a growing population of people who are “done with church.” They are appropriately known as “The Dones.” They are done with the trappings that come along with “doing church” or “playing church” these days. They are NOT…

“Whoever welcomes this little child in My name welcomes Me” (Luke 9:48). “Welcome” is a biblical word rich with a rich meaning. It is more than a smile and a handshake. It is more than what happens during the “welcome and…

For over a decade, Sonrise Church’s Light My Way program has been ministering to society’s most downtrodden people. Ex-cons, prostitutes, meth addicts, the impoverished, and the homeless are all welcome at the church’s modern nine-acre campus. What really makes Light…

A strange conversation can be heard in most church parking lots on most Sundays. It goes like this; “Did you get fed this week?” “Yes I did, I loved what the pastor had to say.” Or perhaps; “Did you…

In more than a decade of research, almost every article I’ve come across addressing sex offenders in church communities reveals pastors and leaders focusing exclusively on the sex offenders—the theological grounds for their presence, the church’s obligation to care…

According to Scripture, it is the parent’s responsibility to raise up their children and teach them about God, but our modern way of doing church relinquishes these things to 45 minutes on Sunday morning and Wednesday night, in a…

Pastors are under a lot of pressure. In most churches today, we employ one person (or a small team) to do the job of many. The Bible tells us that God “ordained some to be apostles, some to be…

Caesar Kalinowski offers practical tips on how the ideas of “organic” and “organized” apply to life in a community of Christians. These terms are often spoken of as binary opposites, but Caesar points out how both are needed for…

When the day is done and last of the lights are turned out and my head hits the pillow, all I can think of is the faces of The 21 and their surrendered heads, their heads carrying the full…

So, in the New Testament sense of the word, “heresy” was the creation of a division, a sect, a faction, or a party. For this reason, the author of Acts uses the word to describe the different sects within…

The great heresy of the church today is that we think we’re in the entertainment business. A.W. Tozer believed this to be true back in the 1950s and 60s. Church members “want to be entertained while they are edified.”…

Sometimes the world can feel overwhelming, especially among the younger people of my generation. There’s a really deep need to find our place in it. But it’s often the case that the institutions that used to broker connections—institutions like…

The dominant narrative at the moment is that, while church attendance is down across the board, men in particular are staying home on Sunday mornings. And while there has been much hand-wringing over this reality, there has, to my knowledge,…

We have a poor understanding of the local church. We operate from a poor definition of church planter. We have a poor understanding of our Commission.  We act as if Jesus has commanded us to plant churches.  We are commanded to…

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair Does the Bible teach us to tithe? Are we spiritually obligated to fund the pastor and his…

The idea of churchmanship was to be wholly unattractive. I was not in the least anticlerical, but I was deeply antiecclesiastical. It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how…

According to the New Testament, there is no clergy/laity distinction. Instead, all Christians are kleros (clergy) and all Christians are laos(laity). The clergy/laity dichotomy is a tragic fault line that runs throughout the history of Christendom. The New Testament doesn’t…

Pastor Challenge 2015 — Step aside and let the living Jesus lead at least 1 Sunday morning church meeting all by Himself. Here’s how:  Begin by reading 1 Corinthians 14:26 to the congregation from a microphone on the floor…

There are many Christians who have stopped going to church. They have not given up on God, have not renounced their faith, have not denied Christ, and have not become pagans. They simply are no longer going to church.…

There comes a point in the journey of every Christian where cynicism starts to look inviting. Even mature. But there’s a difference between looking for ways to make the Church better and looking for things to complain about. Mature,…

Hey Church, you may think you know why people are leaving you, but I’m not sure you do. You think it’s because “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all walking away. You believe that they’ve…

Is not the mission of God to see people not only reconciled to God, but also diverse groups reconciled to each other? In this video Leonce Crump challenges us to pursue racial reconciliation in light of the…

Jeff Vanderstelt articulates why people are disillusioned and disappointed with church these…

A very popular phrase I hear is that we are the church. So I would encourage you, if you are dissatisfied with an aspect of your church (not including faulty doctrine, of course) rather than trying to find the…

Like many in my generation, I’ve done some moving around and with each new move I’ve had to begin the difficult process of searching for a new church home. If you’re like most, a day is coming when you…

Community is core to the Christian faith. From the very beginning, fellowship and life together have characterized Christ’s disciples. But the centrality of Christian community to the church doesn’t mean that it’s easy—nor does it mean it always looks…

Rob Rienow explains why children should be involved in the gathering of the saints for worship. Believe it or not, this was actually the norm for millennia. It’s only in the last century or so that we had the…

As followers of Jesus seek God’s renewal of the neighborhoods they inhabit, as they begin to discern how to be the church together in everyday life, it’s inevitable that myths will arise. Here are five myths I’ve already discovered…