The Sea and the Hills Sing His Praise

By / Apr 17

Why Israel’s Coastal Plain and Galilean Hills Matter for Bible Study

In the summer of 2023, a group of faculty and leaders from Midwestern Seminary had the opportunity to take a tour of Israel. Having arrived in the Holy Land, our first day of touring was a stunning experience. Each of the tour stops provided a window into history and Christian theology. Our time in Caesarea Maritima, Mount Carmel, and Nazareth allowed us to reflect on Gentile inclusion, God’s glory, and the gospel.

Caesarea Maritima & Gentile Inclusion

Caesarea Maritima was built by Herod the Great as a harbor city that could expand the economic horizons of the Jezreel Valley and his status in the eyes of Caesar Augustus. The robust port provided easy shipping access and trade in the Mediterranean Sea. A city name that reminded everyone of the Roman emperor solidified Herod’s favor with Augustus. Herod, ever concerned for his safety and the power of Rome’s army, also built barracks in Caesarea.

One of the many military commanders who served there, Cornelius, is named in Scripture. This centurion was the first Gentile convert of Peter’s ministry, and in Acts 10, Luke records the account of his conversion. Cornelius feared God and acted kindly toward the Jewish people. One night, he had a vision telling him to send for Peter, who was staying 20 miles south in Joppa, and ask him to come to Caesarea. Meanwhile, in Joppa, Peter had his vision that declared all foods clean. When the delegation from Cornelius arrived, the Spirit told Peter to go with them to visit Cornelius in Caesarea. The rest is salvation history.

Peter preached the gospel to Cornelius there, and the Spirit came upon him and his household. When Peter saw the evidence of the Spirit, he understood that the coming of the Spirit and the removal of food distinctions were two sides of the same coin. God had sent His Spirit upon the Gentiles, bringing salvation to all peoples. And Cornelius in Caesarea was the first of Peter’s Gentile converts.

But Caesarea has further significance for Gentile inclusion. After Paul was arrested in Jerusalem for supposedly bringing Gentiles into the Jewish temple, he was sent to Caesarea to be kept safe from the Jewish mob in Jerusalem. Luke devoted a large section of Acts (23:23–26:32) to recounting Paul’s stay there. In Caesarea, Paul defended himself by stating that he had welcomed Gentiles into the faith—but not into the temple as he had been accused. It was in Caesarea that Paul finally appealed to Caesar in Rome. After he arrived there, his mission to the Gentiles was confirmed (Acts 28:23–29).

Standing on the very stones where Paul would have walked and given his defense is an experience that words cannot describe.

Mount Carmel & God’s Glory

From Caesarea Maritima, we traveled up to Mount Carmel, where Elijah demonstrated God’s glory. In 1 Kings 17:1, the prophet Elijah told Israel’s idolatrous King Ahab that no rain would fall on the fertile Jezreel Valley except at Elijah’s command. A drought ensued, and Ahab chased Elijah down to intercede for the land. For Elijah, this was all about God’s glory. Elijah told Ahab to summon the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel. Elijah also prayed and asked God to show that He alone is the Lord.

Atop Mount Carmel, Elijah set up an altar and drenched it in water. It was struck with fire and consumed, while the altar of the prophets of Baal was touched only by human hands. Then, after executing the 450 false prophets in the Jezreel Valley, Elijah climbed Mount Carmel again and prayed for rain. Our tour group stood on Mount Carmel and looked to the west, as Elijah’s servant did, waiting on a cloud as the sign of rain.

Nazareth & The Gospel

Our third stop in the region was Nazareth. Jesus was raised in Nazareth, a small village in the valley of several mountains. It was a no-name kind of town. Nathanael questioned Philip whether anything good could come out of Nazareth (John 1:46). In Luke 4:16–23, Luke records that in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus began His public ministry by reading from Isaiah 61:1–2 and proclaiming Himself as the Lord’s anointed prophet of the good news. The people of the town rejected Jesus and drove Him to a cliff on the eastern edge of the city. Standing upon the edge of that cliff reminds one that the good news is not always welcome.

Conclusion

All of these scenes in the region of Galilee anticipate Jesus’s ministry in Jerusalem on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Luke records that once Jesus had completed His ministry in the regions around Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, He set His face toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). It was in Jerusalem, via the cross and resurrection, that Jesus would glorify God in a way that Elijah could not. As very God and very man, Jesus took the punishment for human sin and displayed God’s power for the world to see by rising from the dead. It was in Jerusalem that the temple curtain would be torn on that Friday afternoon, removing the wall separating Gentiles from Jews so all peoples could have access to God together (Eph. 2:11–22; Heb. 10:19–22).



Why It’s Good to Be a Needy Person

By / Apr 16

Editor’s note: The following article was adapted by the author from his book Pour Out Your Heart: Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer (pp. 33–41). Pour Out Your Heart is available now from B&H Publishing and wherever books are sold.

I don’t watch much TV these days, so I rarely see any commercials anymore. But even I noticed that commercials in mid-2020 took on a totally new tone. This was, of course, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, and large corporations were scrambling to maintain their sales during a national lockdown. Let me remind you of the basic commercial script during these months.

Let’s say the product is Reese’s peanut butter cups. The scene opens with dramatic, inspiring music. There’s a sunrise, or sunset, we’re not sure. Children are dancing. They’re talking with grandma by video. Parents are smiling from their laptops. And the narrator, in a deep and reassuring voice, says: “In these uncertain times…now more than ever…we are resilient, we will make it through…nothing can stop us…Reese’s. You can eat them at home.”

Whatever the product, the message was the same. But immediately, an internal inconsistency was evident. “Nothing can stop us,” they would say. Well, Covid can stop us. “We will make it through.” Well, not everyone.

This was the problem revealed: We are needy creatures, and life is far more fragile than we realize. Denying this will do us no good. Trying to motivate ourselves to overcome is sure to run out of steam. For millions of people, Covid meant the death of loved ones, losing their jobs, financial hardship, strained relationships, political strife, church conflict, and persistent despair. (A more honest commercial would have been: “Everything is awful. There’s not much to say. But Reese’s might help you feel better for a few minutes.”)

To be “a needy person” is one of the great insults of our performance-based, success-oriented culture. But the truth is that we are creatures of need. There will never be a time when we are no longer in need.

And believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Jesus invites us—commands us, even—to acknowledge our need and bring it to God.

Why We’re Needy Creatures

We were designed to have needs long before sin and all its effects entered the world. Adam and Eve needed God for life. They needed God for provision. They needed God’s world as a home—a habitat in which they could live, move, multiply, and cultivate good things. To be needy, then, is not the same as being sinful. Further, even Jesus, in his humanity, experienced need.

When the Son of God came to earth, he came in need. He didn’t descend in glory. He didn’t come as a young adult, strong and well-educated and self-sufficient. He came as a baby. He spent nine months in Mary’s womb. He was completely dependent on others, like all other babies. Luke 2 says “he grew in wisdom and stature” as a young man. He was needy and dependent because he was fully human—as well as fully divine. He needed his Father’s presence; he needed food, water, and rest.

Not only did Jesus exhibit human neediness, he taught it. In his parables and teachings, Jesus shows us our need. Remember Jesus’s Beatitudes? If we could distill them down, they’d be this, simply put: Blessed are the needy, for they will be satisfied. In fact, it seems like Jesus came especially for those with the most significant, immediate needs (Luke 4:18–19).

To be human is to be in need. To resist your neediness is to dehumanize yourself and reject God’s design. We reject our neediness often out of pride, but also because we have a low view of our physical world, which is the environment by which God meets so many of our needs.

Being a Christian is not first about being a good person like Jesus. It’s about being the kind of needy, broken person that Jesus loves to forgive and heal and restore.  The needy receive forgiveness and respond in love. The proud tragically secure their own future—life without God. It’s haunting that Jesus lets the rich young ruler walk away from him; Jesus doesn’t pursue him (Matt. 19:16–22). Why? The young man has no need of Jesus. Or rather, he has no awareness of his need.

Could it be that Jesus doesn’t reluctantly meet our needs, but that he actually delights in meeting our needs? As the pastor Jon Tyson has said, “Jesus is drawn to your need.”

Jesus Is Drawn to Your Need

On one occasion, Jesus is moving through a crowd, and a synagogue ruler named Jairus approaches him and begs Jesus to heal his only daughter (Luke 8:42). Jesus is making his way through the crowd, headed for Jairus’s house, when a woman with great need interrupts him—she had had a chronic health issue for twelve years—and reaches out to touch Jesus’s clothes. Why? “Because she had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well’” (Mark 5:27–28). The result?

“Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease” (Mark 5:29). Instantly, Jesus realizes power has gone out from him, and he stops to ask who had touched him. When the woman sees she can hide no longer, in a moment of great shame, she reveals her condition and approaches Jesus “with fear and trembling… and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth” (Mark 5:33). And—don’t miss this—she doesn’t do this in private. The crowds are still around. When she falls in front of Jesus and explains why she is making physical contact with him, we see that she “declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him” (Luke 8:47). She is doing this in front of a massive gathering of people who will look down on her for her uncleanness and neediness. And yet Jesus raises her up out of her shame and says, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed from your affliction” (Mark 5:34).

Now, pause and recognize the difference between these two individuals. Jairus was a man, a respected leader of the synagogue, a pillar of the Jewish community. This woman, who is not named in the story, is likely older, unmarried or widowed, and lacks any social status; even more, she’s chronically ill and unclean. Jairus stands at the center of Jewish life with so much influence; this woman cowers outside of it, with none. You’d expect Christ to be more drawn to Jairus’s need—after all, healing the daughter of a synagogue ruler would certainly circulate the news of Jesus like wildfire. Not to mention, Jairus isn’t the infected one. He’s still in good standing before the community. If the aim is ultimately to spread the good news and reveal Jesus as the divine Son of God, pushing past this woman and getting a move on to Jairus’s house would be the efficient and effective method for ministry growth. Draw near to the one in good standing—the guy with influence—right?

This woman, on the other hand, is the infected one. When Jesus realizes power has gone out from him, he could have just moved on to the more important ministry with the more important person on his schedule for the day. Why stop? Especially with such a “better” ministry opportunity waiting for him at Jairus’s house? And once he discovers the identity of the person who touched him, why address her further?  She got what she wanted, after all. Why linger even longer—long enough to call her daughter, and bless her in the sight of the crowd?

Because Jesus is drawn to need—in all its forms and from all kinds of people. And he can meet more than one at a time. He can be on his way to meeting one and make time to be interrupted by another. So, on the days you feel like your need isn’t as important as the next person’s, remember this woman and tell yourself the truth: Jesus is drawn to need, and he likes when you interrupt him with yours.

More than that, he’ll bless you for coming to him and telling him the whole truth about your needs. Of course, Jesus is the only one who can meet our deepest need—our need of forgiveness and salvation. But he’s drawn to all our needs because he is drawn to us in love.

When we come to Jesus with great need, he responds by giving us his full attention. It doesn’t matter where we stand in society. When we muster up all the faith we can, though we struggle to believe, Jesus stands ready to respond. When we realize we can hide no longer, he is ready to embrace us.

It’s good to be a needy person. Jesus loves to meet your needs.



Episode 311: The Easter Episode

By / Apr 16

In this episode, the latest annual reflection during Easter week, Jared Wilson and Ross Ferguson discuss why too many preachers and churches frequently leave out the resurrection in their gospel presentations. Why is it so easy to forget the resurrection? And what should this week’s emphasis on Christ’s emergence from the grave mean for our thinking and ministry year-round?



What about ministry gives you joy? – Jed Coppenger

By / Apr 15

FTC. co asks Jed Coppenger ‘What about ministry gives you joy?’.



The Problem of Good

By / Apr 9

“I feel drawn to the idea of God, but I don’t think I can get over the reality of things like childhood cancer, spousal abuse, and sexual assault. If God is out there, why is He letting these things happen? If I were driving down the road and saw someone attacking someone, I’d be morally obligated to intervene. Yet this God who we’re supposed to worship is passive? If He is real, is He even worthy of our love or glory?”

A new person to our church asked me this question a few weeks ago. She wasn’t being a smug skeptic; she was genuinely wrestling with the nature of a personal deity who tolerates such decay.

The problem of evil isn’t merely a topic to be discussed in Philosophy 101 courses; it’s a wound that exists in the heart of every person who loves suffering persons and is simultaneously trying to hold onto the twin doctrines of God’s providence and God’s goodness. Like a mother trying to attend to three crying kids all at once, the problem of evil harasses the soul, pulling it in three directions.

“Tread lightly,” I warned. “Do you know what you’re starting to sound like?”

“I know, I know,” she responded, “I’m not smarter than God, blah blah blah. I sound like a Reddit atheist who’s socially awkward, who only knows how to connect with people by antagonizing them.”

“No, that’s not what I was getting at. You’re starting to sound like a biblical author.”

She stared back at me, surprised. “What? I’m telling you about obstacles to my faith, just to be clear.”

“Yes, I hear that. And your obstacles to faith sound like faith. The questions you are raising sound like what we read about in Job, Psalms, Lamentations, and even what we hear from Jesus when He’s suffering. ‘How long, oh Lord? Why have You forsaken me? Why do You stand by idly in the face of evil? You said You hate evil, yet the evil ones flourish.’ What you’re describing as doubts are actually the seeds of faith. About a third of the prayers in the Psalms and a few of the whole books in the Bible sound like this.”

“I didn’t know about that. I thought that was ‘unbeliever’ language,” she said.

“Oh, quite the opposite,” I continued. “In order to be angry at evil, you have to have a concrete belief in the existence of not-evil, or goodness. This shouldn’t be assumed.”

Where Does Good Come From?

“Okay, tell me more.” She leaned in. “Part of what brought me here today is a sense that there has to be a design to all of this; like, for my kids to be objectively and not just subjectively meaningful, there has to be some moral structure to the world.”

“Yes! Exactly!” I said. “That belief in order, meaning, goodness, and beauty—where can it come from? For childhood cancer to be not good, it must be violating some standard of goodness that exists not just in your mind, but above your mind. The same with spousal abuse. If you want to be able to say that these things are objectively bad, there must be an objective good, a standard that is over-and-above subjective preferences or cultural sensibilities.”

“Okay, but how does that connect to faith in God or Jesus?” she asked.

“Here’s how. If everything came from nothing, on accident, then, so the story goes, all that exists is physics and chemistry. Protons and electrons. Atoms. Chemicals and chemical reactions. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a fizzing bag of the periodic table colliding together. Science and scientific inquiry cannot give you an ‘ought,’ but only an ‘is.’ They can’t say what should be. They can only describe what has been. There is no moral or immoral. No good or not good. No beautiful. No ugly. Just a view on reality.

“But,” I continued, “if we aren’t inhabiting mere ‘nature’ but instead a ‘creation,’ then there is a ‘should’—a ‘how things are supposed to be.’ There, evil can be truly evil, not just ‘against my preferences.’”

“I see,” she replied. “I think I’ve been sensing that, and that’s why my family is here today.”

“I can see that. And what a step you’ve taken. The problem of evil is difficult, but the problem of goodness is more difficult. It is certainly part of why I am a Christian today. I have an answer to the problem of goodness, but I’m rarely satisfied by my answer to the problem of evil.”

Trust in the Ultimate Good

“How?” she asked. “How can you not have an answer?”

“Oh, I have an answer,” I said. “But it is only sometimes emotionally satisfying. Often it isn’t. Then I start to pray like the biblical authors. ‘How long, oh Lord? Why do You do what You do? I don’t like what You’re up to!’ The genre is called lament. In Hebrew, Lama means ‘why?’ Many of the laments offered up in the Scriptures are not answered. It is frustrating. When Jesus laments on the cross, He still dies. God in the flesh took His own medicine. So I can at least trust that He gets my emotional state.”

I went on. “But He rose from the dead three days later. So we see that God can use evil for good. Rarely do we get such a clean demonstration of goodness like we do in the good news of Jesus. So we can choose to trust. We inhabit the tension. A preacher named Charles Spurgeon once said, ‘The Christian trusts Him where he cannot trace Him.’”[1]

“Well, I don’t love that, but I guess it makes sense.”

“Yes, but do you see how the problem of goodness has to come before the problem of evil? How beauty must precede ugliness? The chaos of naturalistic evolution cannot deliver on the problem of goodness.”

“Yes. Absolutely,” she said.

“The life God is inviting you into does require trust that grows over time. You have faith in the existence of a creation; next comes faith in the Creator. However, no matter how much you trust Him, you’ll never outgrow the prayers of lament until He returns and makes all things new. And even then, I’m not convinced I will understand all that He’s done in this life; He’ll always be infinite, and we’ll remain finite even into eternity. To trust the infinite One will require discomfort. You are already stepping into that by coming here today and speaking with me. It seems like the Lord has a hook in your mouth, but you’re not quite yet in the book. He will continue what He’s started.”

She teared up, thanked me for talking, and said she’d better go get her kids from the kids’ ministry.

Here’s the reality: No slick answer will solve the relational and emotional difficulty of the problem of evil. A cute answer may even unintentionally cheapen the suffering. Validating the inquirer’s concerns while simultaneously inviting them to consider an additional problem, the problem of goodness, can validate a small spark of faith while inviting the person into an honest life with God. In seeing the person behind the philosophical questions, we can faithfully represent the One who will hear them when they learn to call on His name.

__________

[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, “A Happy Christian,” from Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 13, The Spurgeon Center, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/a-happy-christian/#flipbook/.



Episode 310: Live Conference Episode Part 2

By / Apr 9

In the second of two live episodes recorded at the Federated Fellowship Bible Conference in Pella, Iowa, this time around Jared and Ross answer questions from the conference audience. No pre-screening. No safety net. Just a couple of guys, a couple of mics, and a handful of surprise queries.



What about ministry gives you joy? – Madison Grace

By / Apr 8

FTC.co asks Madison Grace ‘What about ministry gives you joy?’.



Harnessing the Winds of Revival

By / Apr 7

Editor’s note: This article is taken from the introduction to C. H. Spurgeon’s Sermons (Expanding Ministry—Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: 1861 to 1876, Volumes 7–22) in vol. 7, pp. v–vii and pp. xiv–xv. Used by permission of Reformation Heritage Books. This collection is now available for purchase.

The first seven years (1854–1861) of C. H. Spurgeon’s ministry in London were accompanied by a surprising revival. No one could have expected it. Through a nineteen-year-old country preacher, a dying congregation was revitalized, and hundreds—perhaps thousands—were converted under his ministry during those early years. Though only a few dozen were in attendance when Spurgeon first arrived at New Park Street in 1853, by 1861 membership was at 1,473, with thousands more regularly attending.

But revival also brought its challenges. During those years Spurgeon warned his congregation, “If the Lord sends his Spirit like a hurricane, it is ours to deal with skill with the sails lest the hurricane should wreck us by driving us upon some fell rock that may do us serious injury.”[1] Spurgeon had seen churches shipwrecked in the winds of revival.[2] One church boasted of taking in a hundred or so new members in a year, only to excommunicate eighty of them the following year for “disorderly conduct and forsaking the truth.”[3] Other churches were happy to swell their ranks but gave no thought as to how to disciple or engage their people in ministry.[4] Some self-proclaimed revivalists had begun resorting to new tactics and emotionalism, hoping to fabricate the work of the Spirit.[5] Even as Spurgeon experienced a revival in his church, he refused to compromise his theological and ecclesiological convictions. “Take care, ye that are officers in the church, when ye see the people stirred up, that ye exercise still a holy caution, lest the church become lowered in its standard of piety by the admission of persons not truly saved.”[6]

At the same time, Spurgeon did not want to let the winds of revival simply pass by. There was such a response to his preaching that he contemplated at one point becoming a traveling evangelist. But in his experience of itinerant preaching, it was hard to know what the long-term effect was. While preaching in an open field in Wales, Spurgeon describes how “the Spirit of God was poured upon us, and men and women were swayed to and fro under the Heavenly message.” Still, once the meeting ended, the people went their separate ways, and he would never see them again.[7]

While one must be careful not to let the winds destroy the ship, the skillful sailor will look for ways to harness that wind. But how does one harness the hurricane winds of revival? Spurgeon believed it was through the church. As converts gave credible professions of faith, they were brought into the membership of the church, where they could be cared for by the elders and discipled under the ministry of the word. Not only that, but these church members were then engaged in the work of ministry, in both caring for one another and bringing the gospel to the lost around them. Spurgeon’s effort to harness the winds of revival was represented by the building and opening of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861. This magnificent new building that seated six thousand would become the base of operations for Spurgeon’s ministry for the next thirty years.

If the New Park Street Pulpit tells the story of a revival in London, then the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit tells the story of the harnessing of that revival through an established and expanding church ministry. Like the previous volumes, they are a collection of the published Sunday morning sermons that were being preached week by week at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and then collected into a single volume at the end of each year. But just as God uses the preaching of the word to revive His people, He also uses it to sustain them and send them out. These sermons were the lifeblood of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, establishing that congregation in the word and providing the spiritual vitality needed for all the endeavors that would flow out of it.

~

The stories from Spurgeon’s ministry are remarkable: the vast audiences, the sermons published, the pastors trained, the churches planted, the orphans fed, the missionaries sent out, and the battles fought, all on a vast scale that is hard to imagine. Truly, it was a surprising work of God. It must be remembered, however, that Spurgeon did not do all that alone. He was surrounded in this work by his congregation. These sermons are a reminder that what motivated and sustained these congregational efforts was not human creativity or industry but God working powerfully through the preaching of the gospel. Through these gospel-rich sermons, God brought many to repentance and faith, uniting them to the church and motivating their service.

Church growth experts today will have thousands of new ideas on how to grow a church and keep people engaged. Some of those ideas may be useful. But not if they come at the expense of this one central call of the minister: preach Christ. Spurgeon’s fruitful ministry stands as a stirring commendation to the power of faithful gospel preaching. That’s not to say we can ever presume a particular kind of result. Spurgeon’s story was a surprising and unique work of God in a particular historical context.

Still, those who preach the gospel faithfully can pray and expect that God’s word will not return void. In his one thousandth published sermon, from the parable of the prodigal son, Spurgeon stated the aim of his sermon, once again echoing his words at the opening of the Tabernacle and continuing in the themes that he had already preached thousands of times before:

My desire this morning shall be to put plainly before every sinner here the exceeding abundance of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, hoping that the Lord will find out those who are his sons, and that they may catch at these words, and as they hear of the abundance of the bread in the Father’s house, may say, “I will arise and go to my Father.”[8]

__________

[1] C. H. Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit (1855–1916; repr., Grand Rapids: Refor- mation Heritage Books, 2024), 4:167.

[2] Though in some of these cases, Spurgeon would have questioned whether a real, Spirit-wrought revival took place at all.

[3] Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, 2:76.

[4] Spurgeon states, “Alas! there is such a thing as having a large addition to the church of men that are of no use whatever. Many an army has swelled its ranks with recruits, who have in no way whatever contributed to its might.” New Park Street Pulpit, 2:76.

[5] Spurgeon recounts, “I have heard of the people crowding in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening, to hear some noted revivalist, and under his preach- ing some have screamed, have shrieked, have fallen down on the floor, have rolled themselves in convulsions, and afterwards, when he has set a form for penitents, employing one or two decoy ducks to run out from the rest and make a confession of sin, hundreds have come forward, impressed by that one sermon, and declared that they were, there and then, turned from the error of their ways.” New Park Street Pulpit, 4:162.

[6] Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, 4:167.

[7] C. H. Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography: Compiled from His Diary, Letters, and Records, by His Wife and His Private Secretary (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1897–1900), 2:93–94.

[8] Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 17:386–87.



Episode 309: Live Conference Episode Part 1

By / Apr 2

Here’s a first for the FTC Podcast! Jared and Ross recorded this Mailbag episode live at the Federated Fellowship Bible Conference in Pella, Iowa on March 8, 2025 as the first part of two total live episodes. The questions submitted by listeners include: when should pastors speak out about politics, why evangelism feels “transactional,” the impact of conferences and podcasts on our understanding of pastors, and how uniform church members should be on doctrinal matters.



Why I love ministry – JT English

By / Apr 1

JT English answers ‘Why I love Minsitry” for ftc.co.