The Gospel Coalition

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

Adopting a School

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

Facing Up to Sex Trafficking

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