Today I officially end my temporary blog break. Thanks for your patience.

Beginning tomorrow, I plan to publish a new series of posts entitled Answers to Skeptics.

Each post will give my answers to specific objections I’ve received in my conversations with those who do not yet know Jesus.

Today, I’d like to introduce the series by quoting renowned historian Will Durant. Durant, who was not a Christian, wrote the following incisive statement in The Story of Civilization, Vol III: Caesar and Christ.

“The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion…. The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so loft an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man.”

Here are two posts I’ve written in the past that serve as a preface to the series:

Rethinking How We Present the Gospel

Why I’m a Christian

I’ve previously shared that a strong part of our Christian heritage is the practice of writing new lyrics to well-known tunes. This practice goes back to at least the Reformers. But I suspect it precedes that.

Back in February, I delivered a message to a Christian community entitled Living in the Divine Parenthesis. The night before I brought the message, I wrote a song as a companion to the talk called “He Has Anointed Us.”

I wrote it to the tune of Wavin’ Flag by K’naan — a specific version of it performed by the Young Artists for Haiti. I regard their version to be one of the most inspiring melodies of our time.

Recently, a group of Christians I know took the lyrics I wrote and recorded the new song in a studio. And . . . well . . . it blew me away.

The lyrics follow below so you can read them while you listen to the recording. The talk I delivered (above) gives the context and meaning of each line.

Click here to listen to the recording. These saints did an amazing job.

I hope you’re inspired by the song. Continue Reading…

Today’s post is a synchroblog. Meaning, I want you to answer a specific question on your own blog (for those of you who blog).

If you don’t have a blog, just put your answer in the comments section here. (If you subscribe by email, don’t click Reply and answer. No one will see it. You have to comment on the blog itself.)

Please don’t use Facebook in place of your blog as it doesn’t count. But feel free to click the Facebook button (or link) below to share the post with others.

Here is how it works. Read carefully.  Continue Reading…

I have often stressed that the church’s calling to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world (a la, Luke 4:18-19) is just as much a part of God’s Eternal Purpose as living as a face-to-face community that makes a home for the Lord to lay His head.

(I’m speaking here of the church in local expression . . . a tangible, touchable, locatable body of believers in a locale, in whatever form or shape it may take.)

We Christians seem to fall off one side of the horse or the other on this subject.

Some make the church a shallow “soul-winning” / “world-improvement” station with little depth, relational life, or spiritual substance. Others make the church an insular, isolated, navel-gazing community.

I believe the church must know both inreach and outreach . . . it must know what it means to be “built together” as well as “being Christ” for the world. And it must learn how to discern the season for each.

As I’ve argued in From Eternity to Here, the ekklesia is called to embody Jesus Christ as a bride, a house, a body, and a family. This is God’s Eternal Purpose. Continue Reading…

With few exceptions, the story that Christians tell others and themselves begins with Genesis 3 rather than Genesis 1. Our starting point is the fall of humanity.

The result: Everything is framed around God’s redemptive mission. It’s all about saving a lost world.

Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that evangelical Christians have built their theology mostly on Romans and Galatians. And many nonevangelical Christians have built it on the Gospels (particularly the Synoptics—Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

And for both groups, Ephesians and Colossians have been put in the footnotes.

But what if we began not with the needs of humans but with the intent and purpose of God? What if we took as our point of departure not the earth after the fall but the eternal activity within God Himself before the constraints of physical time?

In other words, what if we built our theology on Ephesians and Colossians and allowed the other New Testament books to follow suit? Continue Reading…

This post has been updated with an incredible recording of a new song . . . sung to the tune of “Wavin’ Flag.”

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1

Over the years, I’ve said a lot about the seasonal nature of the church and the seasonal nature of the Christian life.

What is true for the church and for the individual Christian is also true for spiritual service or ministry. It too passes through different seasons.

God built seasons into His creation for many reasons. One of which is to teach us spiritual lessons. “First the natural, then the spiritual” . . . “Does not nature teach you? . . . ”

Take Paul of Tarsus, for example. Paul’s ministry was centered on preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ and establishing churches upon that revelation. But Paul didn’t always do that.

After his first church planting trip, Paul spent a lengthy period of time with the church in Antioch, a church he didn’t plant. Following his third church planting trip, he spent time with the church in Jerusalem, another church he didn’t plant.

There were also seasons where God sovereignty limited Paul, allowing him to undergo imprisonment for a period of years. Continue Reading…

Recently, I delivered a message to a group of Christians in their 20s and 30s. I entitled it “Living in the Divine Parenthesis.” Among other things, I tackled the issue of good works and the seasonal nature of a local church.

Ever since I’ve been a Christian, I’ve been taught two different things regarding good works. In my early years as a believer, my spiritual tutors told me that “good works” (also referred to as “good deeds” and “doing good” in the New Testament) was a religious duty and obligation.

Consequently, I (and everyone I knew) viewed good works with a legalistic lens, seeing them as demands that we must fulfill in our own strength and power.

If you want to make God happy, you have to do “good works,” which are the evidence of real faith (so I was told).

Later, I was exposed to another Christian tradition that reacted against this understanding. This tradition taught that good works was anathema. “We’re under grace, so good works isn’t something we have to worry about.” Therefore, those Scriptures that talked about “doing good” were associated with legalism, so we were told to ignore them. Continue Reading…

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

~ Matthew 6:10

As long as I’ve been a Christian, I’ve noted two things that believers routinely get riled up about. One is the role of the Spirit vs. the role of the Scriptures. Christians seem to fall off one side of the horse or the other on this issue.

Over the years, I’ve watched countless fruitless Word vs. Spirit debates that descended into noise. They are fruitless because both the Scriptures and the Spirit work together. And what God has joined together shouldn’t be separated. When I watch people debate this issue today, I quickly begin yawning.

In the same way, I’ve watched countless Christians get roped into fruitless outreach vs. inreach debates. Some maintain that the church exists for outreach (these churches tend to have a rather thin and spiritually shallow community life). Others object that the church exists for community (these churches tend to be insular and ingrown).

The outreach vs. inreach debate is fruitless because it virtually always ignores two things. (1) That an authentic church will pass through seasons (I’ve discussed the seasonal nature of the ekklesia at length in Finding Organic Church), and (2) There are four chief aspects of the church’s mission on earth, all of which are vital. Continue Reading…

After reading Deep Ecclesiology, Jesus Manifesto, or Finding Organic Church, numerous young men who are in ministry have asked me the following question (no women have asked me so far):

“Frank, you talk a lot about preaching Jesus Christ as opposed to preaching ‘things.’ This really resonates. I’ve never heard you speak yet, so can you give me examples from your own preaching of what ‘preaching Christ’ looks and sounds like?”

I’m posting my answer here as I believe it will be of interest to some of you. What follows are five examples. Each message seeks to unveil the staggering glories of the Lord Jesus Christ. The messages are also available on iTunes, Mp3 download, via Google Reader, RSS feed, etc. Just look at the top left-hand side after you click on each link.

Epic Jesus: The Christ You Never Knew

Diary of a Desperate Samaritan Woman: Telling the Story Differently

Remember Peter: Rethinking the Love Christ

Living by the Indwelling Life of Christ

The Eternal Purpose of God in Christ

On a related note, I’ve had many conversations with preachers (and teachers) in which they’ve complained that they often “run out” of things to preach. And thus they’re always on the look-out for new “sermon material.”  Continue Reading…