Nick Sorenson's take on Living for Christ and Serving in the Church

My 95 Theses Pertaining to the Modern Evangelical Church Ok, not 95 and no, I do not agree with many of Luther's beliefs. Where Luther and I would see eye to eye is in the (re)evaluation of something we'd grown up accepting, and to a certain extent swallowing hook line and sinker.   So let the discussion begin. I am sure there are more than 95 issues with the norms we've accepted as the church, but here are just a small number that I believe are at least questionable. Much like Luther's theses, what I will be implying here is that the church has evolved, and strayed as it has done so. And just as Luther tried to do with the Catholic church, let's, as he did, hold our own (existing) view of the church up to the authority of Scripture. After all, as Christians, the Bible, in its entirety, is our belief system. Have we shaped our views pertaining to church structure upon what we've read in Scripture or is it simply mirroring our current church cult ure (note the i...

Should We Refer to Others (or Ourselves) as Father, Pastor, etc? To answer this question, you must interpret Matthew 23:1-12 for yourself. I will give my own opinion on the passage, but before that, let's take it a step further. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the pope is to be referred to as "his holiness". This is at best, extremely inaccurate. According to Jesus Himself in Mark 10:19 and paralleled in Luke 18:19, no one is good except God. We should not refer to another human (with the exception of Jesus who became a Human for 33 years) as "holiness". This blog post is addressing a problem in nearly all denominations (and non-denominations). The issue is perhaps a little less obvious that what we see with the pope's title, but I believe it is in error no less. Should a man (or woman) be referred to as Pastor ____, Father ____, etc? Let's look at the Word: Matthew 23 1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his discipl...