Jul
12
2012
Mercy Ministry in the Church
The latest 9Marks e-Journal focuses on Mercy Ministry in the Church. You can check the issue out here. You’ll find quite a number of helpful articles thinking about the issue both from a theological and a practitioner’s perspective.
Here’s the table of contents:
ARTICLES
The “Regulated Free Market” Approach to Mercy Ministry
When it comes to mercy ministry in the church, both the programmed and the organic approaches have their limitations. Here is a third way.
By Jamie Dunlop
How Do Word and Deed Ministry Fit Together for a Church?
Churches know they are responsible for word ministry. But are they responsible for deed ministry? How do word and deed ministry relate?
By Timothy Keller
Obligation, Stewardship, and the Poor
It’s easy (and biblical) to insist that Christians should “do something about the poor.” But how can we sort out whom we should help, and how much?
By Kevin DeYoung
How Mercy Serves Evangelism in the Church
Here are five ways mercy ministry serves and supports a church’s gospel proclamation.
By Mike McKinley
We Need to Be Careful, but We also Need to Care
Theological nuance is important, but it should never mask disobedience.
By Mike McKinley
PRACTICAL COUNSEL
How to Have Gospel Conversations with Torn Up People
How can you talk to someone with whom you seem to have nothing in common? By seeing their life and yours through the lens of the Bible’s grand narrative.
By John Lauber
Church Mercy Ministry as Integrated Auxiliary
If a mercy ministry in your church grows to the point where it needs some real structure, consider making it an “integrated auxiliary.”
By Jamie Dunlop
How to Start a Mercy Ministry in your Church
If you want your church to help poor people, decide how you are going to help, find people to serve, and tell them about Jesus as you do.
By Layla Wilder
COMPELLING EXAMPLES
Loving the Unlovely and Unwanted
This is the story of one urban church’s efforts to serve its community through both mercy and pointing to the source of mercy.
By David Apple
Here’s how the Summit Church learned to love their neighbors, and what that did for their witness to their community.
By J.D. Greear
Should Christians pass off victims of sex trafficking to non-Christian counselors? Send them to someone else’s church? What? What should pastors know about this world and what can they do?
By Justin Holcomb
AUDIO
Race, the Cross, and the Church
John Piper addresses racism, the gospel, obstacles to reconciliation, and white guilt in this discussion of his recent book Bloodlines.
Posted on July 1, 2012
The Power and Importance of Polity with Hunter Powell
Jonathan Leeman asks Hunter Powell and Mark Dever about authority in the church. What authority does the congregation have? What about the elders? And what did the congregationlists at the Westminster Assembly have to say about it?
Posted on June 1, 2012