Tuesday 3 May 2011

9Marks eJournal 8, 3 (May-June 2011) on Church Membership


The latest 9Marks eJournal is devoted to the topic of church membership. A pdf of the whole issue is available here.


Here’s a portion from the editorial:


‘Evangelicals are good and maybe getting better at talking about the Christian mind, the Christian heart, even the Christian hands and feet. We want to think, feel, and act as Christians.


But what about the skeleton? No one really talks about that. If a skeleton holds things together, what is the structure that holds the Christian life together and gives it its shape? ...


Christ has authorized the congregation and its leaders to act with authority in our lives. That’s not a popular idea among Westerners, but this is the skeleton which keeps the body, otherwise healthy, from slouching to the floor. It’s the bowl which keeps the soup from spilling everywhere. Looking across the evangelical landscape, do you know what I see? A lot of splattered soup. Oh, it’s tasty soup, but it has nothing to contain it and the dogs have been licking it up for years.’

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