As I write these words, our home has descended into the silence of sleep on a Saturday night, and I am alone in the study. In earlier, more normal days, these were the moments when the Lord's Day, the pulpit, and the task of preaching were given final reflection. These were the hours in which…
Whether your cup is half empty or half full in the current global crisis, whether you credit or descry online ministry, the fact cannot be avoided that the era of vacant church buildings and silent pulpits is a significant and sad chapter in the history of the church. We are in the midst of a…
How are we to answer the exigencies and anxieties of the hour? What tone of voice and approach should we assume when the world is crying out for answers? What dangers lie in uncertain speech, in mumbled sounds, as men and women hunger and thirst to know true reality? During this week I have been…
There is a famous anecdote about a church producing some signage for the gable wall of their building, with the proud boast, 'God is the answer'. An overnight graffiti artist, with a strong instinct for philosophy and irony, corresponded with the statement by spraying the words 'What is the question?' This story, be it true…
At the moment it seems like everything is interim. The decisions that we were agonising over a fortnight ago about public events and human contact seem like the naive deliberations of an earlier age, such has been the spread of coronavirus and the protective measures seeking to shore up our defences. The United Kingdom and…
As Christian ministers we are vulnerable to the twin temptations of activism and stoicism, of deploying our energies or cutting our losses, of pursuing our goals with mere human fervour or accepting the state of things without hope of fundamental change. We can burn ourselves out in seeking to change things for ourselves, or quench…
I believe that the systematic expository preaching of Scripture is not the only means of teaching the gathered church, but that it is the best. There are few models which can match working book by book, verse by verse, in terms of the exposure gained to the texture of Scripture's concerns and expression, and the…
If we were charged with helping a new Christian to develop spiritual disciplines for their growth in the faith, what would we most emphasise? If we were trying to encourage a fellow believer who is flagging in their commitment to God, what steps would we urge them to take? These questions are not the basis…
We lay great emphasis on the soundness of preachers we listen to, and authors whom we read. For many of us an individual's fidelity or infidelity to the truth of Scripture will govern the time and weight we lend to what they have to say. We speak longingly, lovingly, or nostalgically of sound preachers and…
In the second week of March 1941, Martyn Lloyd-Jones delivered a series of lectures in the Assembly Hall of the Free Church College, Edinburgh. His area of focus was Romans 1, with particular reference to diagnosing the spiritual condition of mankind, and the definitive remedy offered by the gospel. Recorded in print, with the addition…
