Abusive leadership in God’s House: A Growing Problem Bill Nikides   Book review, Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022. Kindle edition; Powerful Leaders?: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It. London:IVP, 2022, by Marcus Honeysett.   The author of Bully Pulpit, Dr. Michael Kruger a teaching elder ordained in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, as well as serving as the seminary’s President. This ..read more

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Wrapping up the Book of Ruth ..read more

Review, Powerful Leaders?: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It. London:IVP, 2022, by Marcus Honeysett. Books about Christian leadership are commonplace. Marcus Honeysett’s Powerful Leaders? provides an instant contrast to the legion of these I have read. He summarizes the common approach that describes leadership as “influence.” The popular guide to business negotiation, Getting to “Yes” comes to mind. According to that book, the purpose of negotiation is “getting what you want”. Like so many Christian leadership treatments, the point revolves around accumulating sufficient ..read more

Rev. Bill Nikides Meals enjoyed by the congregation were an essential feature in the early church. While the Lord’s Supper took precedence in Sunday worship, it was often followed by a dinner that included visitors and Gentile participants. It was an important part of Paul’s church planting approach. As Jewish congregations were ejected from synagogues and started meeting as separate congregations, they began the process of reaching “outsiders”, Gentiles who not only began to attend worship, but also were invited to these “love feasts”. Paul’s letters to the Romans and Ephesians were both writ ..read more

I will be reviewing in a long article, aiming at publishing, a new book: Powerful Leaders: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent it by Marcus Honeysett. I have been very impressed by its wisdom and careful analysis. After almost 30 years in vocational ministry and 40 including the diaconate, I find it’s words resonate with and explain so many of my own experiences. Very usefully written so that local churches and other Christian organizations may evaluate themselves and grow as Christian leaders ..read more

I had a good conversation with a friend after church last week. He noted that I had referred to a phrase for several weeks and he wanted to make sure he knew what it meant. We were, in fact, talking about our union with Christ and its derivatives, being “in Christ”, “in him” etc. In a way, it is an understandable question. In my own Presbyterian circles, it is not a particularly common expression though all of us that actually read our Bibles stumble across it. It was, after all, a favorite expression of the apostle Paul. I count Paul referring to believers being “in Christ” at least 90 times ..read more

Bread of Life started meeting for worship a few weeks ago. Our prayer is that we would grow into a PCA church serving the community of Laurel, Montana and West Yellowstone County. In compliance with our denominational Book of Church Order (BCO), we have started meeting, worship Sunday afternoons at 4, but will not celebrate the Lord’s Supper until we are approved by our presbytery as a mission church. I am preaching through Colossians and we have supper after worship concludes. Some church plants start under the authority of a local church’s elders (session) but that is only one approved way t ..read more

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit ..read more

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