1 Corinthians 2:1-2

By most modern metrics of church growth, Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill could easily be deemed ineffective and unfruitful.Acts 17:34names only two converts from the gathering he drew in Athens—Dionysius and a woman named Damaris. That small harvest somehow looks less spectacular than the revivals Paul saw in Antioch or Thessalonica. But Paul had a …

When I was just an undergraduate student studying ancient Greek, my professor explained that he had learned ancient Greek while studying at a university in Germany. Consequently, he often had to translate English sentences into German in his head before translating them successfully into ancient Greek. This process of “double translation” is very much like what every person attempts when they share the gospel. While the gospel is timeless and changeless, we each learned the gospel while mired……

This post was first published in January, 2014. —ed. Sadly and ironically, in its attempt to achieve cultural relevance, mainstream evangelicalism has become essentially irrelevant. As Os Guiness points out,[1]the seductive promise of “relevance” is, in reality, the road to irrelevance. When the church markets itself like the world, the distinctiveness of its message is …

If you identify with my struggle of constantly grappling with the voices of self-doubt and concern over what others are thinking, join me in walking out of that courtroom.…