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Guest Post: "The Church and Bible Study"
[Today marks the 9th edition in our “The Church and…” series. Our guest writer today is Drew Kizer. Drew preaches for the Ashville Road church of Christ in Leeds, Alabama. He has served there since 2000. A graduate of both the undergraduate and graduate Bible schools at Freed-Hardeman University, Drew also makes regular trips to Russia, where he helps train preachers and conduct evangelistic work. He is the author of three books. Drew is married to Julie and they have two beautiful children, Ava and Jackson (their newborn!). We are grateful for Drew for so many reasons. We hope you will read his words carefully and see a man who…
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Catching Up on Book Reviews
I did the weekly list yesterday because I was about to finish another book, so some book reviews got moved to today. Since my last book review, I have completed several volumes. Enjoy! ————— The Rabbit & The Elephant Tony & Felicity Dale with George Barna I thought this book was going to be wonderful. I was wrong! I actually won this book on a Twitter contest. I thought it was going to be about how to organize groups within the church without dividing the congregation. Um, no. The book is about how to have churches in locations other than church buildings and how to “rabbit” other congregations (get it?).…
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Why "Five"?
As I mentioned on the last post (the Friday Links Roundup), I have been challenging our e-newsletter readers to invite five people to worship each week. Of course, it can be the same five, but that got me to thinking that five is a fairly small number. Why settle on that number, and why stop at just inviting people. Here are some “fives” that might help you in your Christian walk. 1. Can you give 5 more minutes each day to prayer? I fully understand that prayer isn’t about the “quantity” of time. Prayer is about the heart and the connection with God. However, that connection comes through prayer. Find…
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Friday Links Roundup: Inviting Five Edition
Each week, I send out a couple of email newsletters to the Lebanon Road family. They are basically reports on the work (and the Monday newsletter has taken the place of the “Lebanon Road Report” post that used to be here each Monday). If you would like to receive these via email, just send me a quick email and I’ll add you to the list (adfaughn at gmail dot com). For the past couple of weeks, I have been issuing a challenge via the newsletter for each person to invite five people to worship each week. For some, that’s simple: they just invite a family of five! For others, that’s…
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Guest Post: The Church and Money
[Today’s post is the 8th in our continuing “The Church and…” series. It is written by Craig Ford, who is a missionary in Papua New Guinea. Craig is one of the writers at the blog Money Help for Christians. You can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed here. We are grateful for Craig’s insight into this topic, and for taking time to write for us.] I grew up believing that discussions about money carried a certain amount of ‘unholiness’. Those who are truly spiritual elevate themselves above such petty issues and instead focus on more important discussions of salvation, baptism, heaven, and hell. I assumed that the truly holy are…
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6 Radio Tunes that Make Great Devotional Titles
The Bible is our only rule of faith and practice, but sometimes we need a little interesting way to “title” our message. While the message is the most important thing (and we should never get caught up in spending a ton of time looking for a title–as some of my sermons have shown!), there are still some great titles out there. Maybe you teach short devotionals on Wednesday nights, at retreats, or for youth groups. Here are some songs that make for great titles and can lead you to some wonderful Biblical lessons. (The links take you to a YouTube video of the song.) [One note: we are not, of…
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Friday Links Roundup: 25 cents Edition
As I type this, we are right in the middle of hosting a garage sale. It’s about 50 degrees and misting, but we are still selling a few things. I think we should start a trend to rename garage sales: “Funding Retirement, a Quarter at a Time.” Still lots of good stuff left, and we’ll be here tomorrow morning, too. Come buy something!!! On to the links for this week: 1. Daniel Hope gives a very simple recipe for our lives in his post “From Affluenza to Simplicitisfaction” (my spell checker just exploded!). 2. Drew Kizer (who is the proud daddy of a new little boy!!!) writes about a well-known passage…
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Guest Post: The Church and Her Elderly
[Continuing our “The Church and…” series, we are glad to have brother David Lemmons as our guest writer. David now preaches for the Bellevue Road church of Christ in Dublin, Georgia. He is in his 27th year of ministry, having preached in Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kentucky. David is a graduate of the Brown Trail School of Preaching and Freed-Hardeman University. He also is a graduate of the Memphis School of Preaching’s 3rd year degree program. David is married and has three children and one grandchild. We are grateful for David taking time to write today’s post. Make sure you check out his blog, LemmonsAid, here.] In an unscientific examination…
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8 Questions I'd Like to Ask
I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend time with faithful Christians, and especially those who preach. Jeff Jenkins is in the middle of a weekly series on his blog where he shares some thoughts from preachers he knows. Find his blog here. One of the great treats that I, personally, get to enjoy is interviewing preachers on iPreach. Young and old, these preachers give me encouragement and help me see that preaching really is a great way to live! However, there are some preachers I only know by “legacy.” They passed on before I could interact with them. I’ll never know them except through books, online sermons, and stories told…
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A Case for the Invitation
The preacher has been talking for 25 or 30 minutes and now he walks down from the pulpit area. It’s obvious that he’s about “done,” so what do people do? Of course, they put their Bibles away and grab the song books. The teaching part of the sermon is over, after all. Or, is it? I want to make two challenges in today’s post. This is something I have really been hitting hard at Lebanon Road lately, and I think is being received by the members as a way we can be more open to the lost. Challenge #1 is for the members who are listening to the sermon. Don’t…
