f we continue to encourage covocational ministry, more Christians will see it as a viable career path. A person can love their current vocation and see God’s call on their life to serve him by serving a local church simultaneously. Essentially, we open the door to otherwise qualified people who could have a call on their lives to serve but shut out that possibility because of perceived limitations bound by a full-time vocation-only model.
Read MoreEvangelistic church planting is missional church planting as it contextualizes the Gospel without losing its transformational edge. Missional church planting does not seek to dispense spiritual products but seeks to work with the Holy Spirit to take the hope of Christ into the world in an intelligible context.
Read MoreChurches send out missionaries to spread the Gospel. As we seek to plant new churches we must first adjust our vision of what church planting is. Let’s train missionaries who will reach new people with the Gospel in our communities. These missionaries are the Christians in our churches, some of which are called to evangelize in ways that will see new churches planted.
Read MoreAccording to a paper written by Pastor John Roller in the 1980s, Advent Christians planted 100 churches from 1956-1986. Of those churches planted during the middle and latter half of the twentieth century, 50% lived past the 6th year of existence. In the 2018-2020 Advent Christian Strategic Plan, Executive Director Steve Lawson set a goal of planting twice the amount of churches as we have church closures.
Read MoreLast week I published an article titled Can Church Planting Revitalize the Advent Christian Church? Its central premise was “although church planting sometimes seems at odds with church revitalization, it can be a means to revitalize churches because it puts the mission of being Christ’s witnesses to the world front and center.”
Read MoreHow can we revitalize our churches, train leaders, and plant churches? Are these goals important? I suggest that although church planting sometimes seems at odds with church revitalization, it can be a means to revitalize churches because it puts the mission of being Christ’s witnesses to the world front and center. Through planting churches, local churches will see the imminent need to train leaders who can lead their church and send them off to plant new ones locally. The problem will necessitate solutions.
Read MoreCan you think of a good reason NOT to plant a church? There are a plethora of good answers: a declining community, a bad location, no church planter or core group and no vision for reaching the lost. I am sure you could add finances to the list. While the cost of planting a church can be significant, it largely depends on the context in which one is planting. In 2002, we planted Northside Community Church in Knightdale, North Carolina, a suburban community just outside of Raleigh.
Read MoreAs we look at the figures on churches in America across denominational lines, we see most groups are losing ground. We are currently averaging more than three churches per year closing in the Advent Christian denomination. However, numbers are not the most important thing to consider. The real heart of ministry is sharing the message of Jesus Christ with those who desperately need to hear it.
Read More“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity,”[1] but what are the essentials? While both R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur can share a pulpit to give their differing positions on baptism (infant vs. believers baptism respectively), and speak at the same conferences, the fact remains that if R.C. Sproul were faithfully attending MacArthur’s church he still would not meet the requirements for membership and therefore could not join. While the general concept of baptism is necessary in order to be unified with the essentials o
Read MoreRecently in Advent Christian Voices, there was a call for a conversation discussing what it means to be a missional church. The idea of a missional church is not new. Two decades ago the term 'missional church' was coined. The term suggested that "the church is to be understood not as an organization with a mission; rather the church's very identity is mission” (Ott, Strauss and Tennent 2010, 197 in Raven, 2017, 164).
Read MoreI’m new to the denomination and have been working as the Director of Student Ministry at Oak Hill Bible Church in Oxford, MA for the last two years. I came in as a Southern Baptist, but through the mentorship of others I found inconsistencies in my view of anthropology and eschatology; I’m now a conditionalist. As my good friend Nathaniel now likes to say, “Erik is a Reformed Baptist Adventist” or in other words, “Erik is two parts jerk and one part confused.”(I'll let you figure out the formula) During my short tenure, I’ve noticed that we have several issues as a denomination that many have tried to fix, most will recognize that we still have a lot of work to do. In this piece, I would like to tell you what I’m looking for next week at Triennial as a new Adventist who plans to stay here awhile.
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