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It’s another installment in our occasional Bible book feature. This time around, Jared Wilson talks with Dr. Andrew King, Assoc. Prof. of Biblical Studies and Assistant Dean of Spurgeon College, about Hosea. Who was this prophet? What does his story have to do with the story of Jesus? And how can this book impact a local church?
Ftc.co asks John Marc Kohl ‘How can worship leaders reflect scripture in the service?’.
Imagine you’re at a friend’s party one night, where you’re introduced to a man in his late 20s. Let’s call him Rico. You ask him what he does, and he says, “I’m a quarterback.”
As a football fan, you’re immediately interested and begin to ask him questions. “Really,” you say. “Who do you play for?”
“Oh, I’m not on a team,” he responds.
“Well, who did you play for in college?”
Again, Rico answers, “I didn’t play on my college team.”
“How about high school?”
“No, I didn’t play on my high school team.”
At this point, you’re a little puzzled and ask, “So, what team do you or did you play quarterback for?”
“I’ve played quarterback my whole life, but I’ve never been on a football team. Teams are full of hypocrites. I don’t need a team to play.”
“Help me understand. If you’re not on a team, how do you play quarterback, Rico?” you ask.
“While they’re at the stadium playing games, I usually go out in the woods by myself and throw the football through a tire swing. It clears my mind. I feel like I’m connecting to the essence of football. It’s more authentic than those quarterbacks who play on teams.”
The quarterback in this story sounds delusional, doesn’t he? After all, a self-proclaimed quarterback who never joins a team and only plays alone isn’t really a quarterback at all, is he? The lone woodsman claiming to be a quarterback makes about as much sense as a Christian who never attends a church service but only worships alone.
Now, you may be thinking, “Worship is much broader than gathering with God’s people on Sunday.” In one sense, that’s true. All of life should be lived in worshipful response to God’s goodness and grace. The Apostle Paul urges believers to offer their whole life to God as spiritual worship and to do everything including eating and drinking for God’s glory. However, Scripture holds forth a clear expectation for all Christians: God expects His people to worship with His people.
When we say that “every member is a worshipper,” we mean that every Christian should be committed to attending the weekly gathering in order to listen to the Word of Christ with one another, sing with gratitude together, and then walk in wisdom alongside their fellow church members. This is the pattern of the first Christians, who gathered regularly for worship.
A holistic life of Christian worship is only possible within a local church because the church is not “simply a bunch of individual worshippers who happen to be in the same place and time. Individual worship is a subset that flows out of corporate worship,” as David A. Currie writes in “The Big Idea of Biblical Worship.” You can’t offer all of your life to God as worship if you refuse to offer Him Sunday morning to worship with the church.
Editor’s note: This post is excerpted with permission from Every Member Matters, by Joshua Wredburg and Matthew Capps. Copyright 2025, B&H Publishing.
The Gospel affects the entire life of a believer, and the same is true for a body of believers that comprise a local church. Churches, and all that they do, should have a particular Gospel focus. From the preaching to the polity, everything should be intentionally centered on the Gospel. The purpose of this short article is to provide a brief theology of a Gospel-centered church. This will be done by looking at how the Gospel affects preaching and teaching, membership and discipline, and worship and liturgy. I hope that you will be convinced of the necessity of a Gospel-centered church and will then seek to implement these principles in the life of your church.
Preaching and Teaching
Preaching is, perhaps, the most vital element of a Gospel-centered church. Mark Dever says in his book The Church, “God’s people in Scripture are created by God’s revelation of himself. His Spirit accompanies his Word and brings life.”1 If this is true, then the most important thing for churches to do is to proclaim the Word of life. Each church’s growth and godliness depend upon it, hence Paul’s charge to Timothy, “I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
It should go without saying that preaching the Word entails clearly preaching the Gospel. Every sermon or teaching expounded from the Scriptures should find its terminus in the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it is by the Gospel that nonbelievers are saved and believers are sanctified. But I don’t simply mean that every sermon must conclude with a Gospel presentation; rather, the entire sermon is crafted through the lens of the finished work of Christ on our behalf. How one presents the Gospel or shapes a Gospel-centered sermon can vary depending upon the specific passage and context of the preacher.
Thus, the most foundational aspect of a Gospel-centered church is that it is Gospel-centered in its preaching and teaching.
Membership and Discipline
The Gospel creates a people set apart for God. Within the body of Christ, there should be a clear line between those who are “in” and those who are “out.” The “in” aspect represents church membership, and the “out” aspect represents the lost world or those who are undergoing church discipline as a result of living like a non-believer. We see this very clearly in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul charges the church to ex-fellowship a man who was unrepentant concerning gross sin. Paul writes, “Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you’” (1 Cor. 5:12-13). The important question this text raises is, “How can churches judge those on the inside if they don’t know who is on the inside?” Therefore, for the church to be able to practice church discipline as it is biblically mandated to do, it is fundamental for church membership to be taken seriously. Church membership protects and marks off those who have been saved by the glorious Gospel of God, and church discipline warns and rebukes those who profess faith but who are not living in accord with the Gospel. The church cannot have one without the other, and a church that doesn’t take church membership and church discipline seriously is a church that doesn’t take the Gospel seriously. They may profess to, but if they don’t honor the clear distinctions that the Gospel makes by separating the church from the world, then their profession falls flat. It would be like someone saying they take their health seriously while simultaneously eating nothing but junk food and never exercising. Thus, a Gospel-centered church takes church membership and church discipline seriously.
Worship and Liturgy
Gospel-centered churches should structure their weekly services to display the Gospel. When the body comes together, the order of service should not be haphazard. There is a way to structure the service that continually points the members of the body to the Gospel. This is primarily demonstrated by having a Gospel-centered liturgy. For example, a typical liturgy should feature the following: a call to worship, which represents the fact that God has called us and that He is worthy of our worship and adoration; a confession of sin, which reminds us of our continual need to repent and to turn from our sin and shame to embrace the sanctifying work of the Gospel; an assurance of pardon, which reminds us of the true forgiveness we have found in the blood of Christ; and hearing the preached Word so that we can grow in Christlikeness and obedience.
In addition to the service structure, the content of the service should be driven by the Bible. Ligon Duncan has helpfully pointed out that churches that follow the teaching of the New Testament “Read the Bible, preach the Bible, pray the Bible, sing the Bible, and see the Bible.”2 If we have a gospel-centered church, then our service structure and content will readily reflect the Bible.
Why Do We Need a Gospel-Centered Church?
If everything that has been stated so far is true, then the answer to the question “Why do we need a Gospel-centered church?” is not complicated. First, the Gospel is “the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16). Churches can be built upon gimmicks, personalities, entertainment, relationships, and much more, but these things, in and of themselves, have no power. The power that creates a true church is the Gospel.
Second, the Gospel not only creates the church, but it also sustains the church. Oftentimes, churches can look to everything but the Gospel to sustain its people. They try a smorgasbord of options, from the latest church growth techniques to secular relationship advice. This stems from thinking that the Gospel is elementary and that it is something from which you graduate. In reality, the church needs a constant flow of the Gospel as a sick patient needs to be sustained with a constant flow of medicine. Thus, when a church begins to think that it can be sustained by anything but the Gospel, that is the moment the church begins to die.
Third and finally, a church that is not centered upon the Gospel is of no real use, humanly speaking. Sure, it may be temporally encouraging for people to gather once a week and associate with people of whom they are fond, but if the Gospel is absent, then there is not much separating them from the group of atheists gathering down the road for the same purposes. God, through the Gospel, produces eternal change. If we want our churches to have eternal ramifications for both ourselves and our communities, then we must be centered upon the means by which God brings about this change, namely, the good news of His Son, Jesus Christ.
1 Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible (Nashville: B&H, 2012), 22.
2 Ligon Duncan, Foundations for Biblically Directed Worship. 65-68.
Why in the Bible do we find so many prayers composed as poetry? How can poetic prayers help us in our own devotional life? FTC guest all-star Dr. Ronnie Martin joins Jared Wilson on the podcast this week to talk about poetry, prayer, and his new book In the Morning You Hear My Voice, which aims to help Christians in their daily walk with God through all the seasons of life.
Ftc.co asks Matt Capps ‘What about ministry gives you joy?’.
It’s time to say goodbye to our Assistant Director of Ministry Policeman. Raise a bottle of Irn Bru in the air to toast our irrascible, Christian movie-loving co-host, Ross Ferguson, as he shares more about his new ministry assignment, offers some words of wisdom on life and ministry in reflection, and the guys walk down a bit of the podcast memory lane, sharing some favorite famous (and infamous) moments from their 125 episodes together.
Ftc.co asks Mat Alexander ‘What hardships have shaped your ministry?’.
Before I became the lead pastor of my church, I stumbled onto an idea that quietly reshaped my approach to ministry. It came from two very different voices: Bill Gates and Michael Reeves.
Gates, the tech giant, famously takes one or two weeks a year to retreat to his secluded cabin on a lake and read as much as possible — no phone, no meetings, no distractions, just a towering stack of books.
Reeves, the theologian, once shared his rhythm of deep reading: one hour a week, one day a month, one week a year. Both men, in their own fields, had seen the fruit of setting aside time for slow, undistracted, focused reading.
That vision stuck with me.
So now, as a pastor, I take what I cautiously call “reading dayz” each year — usually two to three weeks in the summer. It’s not a formal sabbatical, and I try to communicate that clearly to both my family and my church. But it is carved out, protected time to read deeply, think theologically and let the Lord recalibrate my heart through uninterrupted, aggressive study.
The Shape of the Days
Each year, I choose one doctrine or theological theme — justification, the Holy Spirit, Lloyd-Jones’ sermons on Ephesians, etc. — and build a reading plan three to six months in advance. My days typically follow a rhythm: intermediate-level material in the morning, heavier or more intensive works over lunch into the afternoon and conclude the day with beginner-level material.
During those reading days, I cancel or delegate my usual pastoral responsibilities, including counseling, sermon prep, formal and informal meetings, adult Sunday school and even preaching. Trusted men from within our church step into the pulpit. I still lead the liturgical elements of the service, but I’m not carrying the sermon. I work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., either in my office or in a quiet space at a friend’s house. Evenings are reserved for family, journaling, the gym or phone calls with friends.
Thanks to the generosity of a friend, my family and I usually schedule a one- to three-day retreat in the middle of my overall reading days period. We’ll stay at someone’s home, where I keep reading during the day while the rest of the family rests and plays. In the evenings, we regroup for dinner, do bedtime with the kids and enjoy late-night gospel conversations with friends. It’s both restful and rich.
The Fruit It Bears
These reading days sharpen me, but more than that, they shape our church. Hopefully, over time, the congregation will see that the study of theology isn’t just for the pastor’s time in seminary or for the professor in an ivory tower. It’s for both pastors and the church today. It’s certainly helpful for preaching. But it’s also for life, like in sports, where athletes devote weeks of intense practice, drills and workouts before entering the stretch of a long season.
Reading days remind our members that a pastor should be theologically sharp, biblically astute and spiritually renewed. It creates space for other men to teach and grow as they preach. It gives me a break from preaching — but not from ministry. If anything, it deepens my commitment to it.
Most importantly, it fills me with gratitude — grateful to the God I’m reading about, and grateful for the people I’m reading for. I’m thankful for a church that values study and depth, my elders who champion and defend the time, and a wife who believes it’s good. I’m thankful for a rhythm that keeps me from running on fumes. And I’m grateful for a God who forms pastors not only through preaching, but also in the quiet corners of a study.
What It’s Not
These aren’t vacation days. I gently remind my wife (and myself) that when I hole up with Edwards or Kuyper or Smeaton, I’m not “off.” Our church has entrusted me with time to work differently — but still diligently.
And I don’t read for anyone but my church. I’m not building a platform, prepping for publishing or expanding my ministry. I get to read as a pastor of my local church — for the people I know, love and shepherd week after week.
Final Word
You don’t need an official policy to start dedicated reading days. Just start small. Block out a few days. Or a week. Or even one afternoon. If there’s no one else yet in your church to take the pulpit, swap with a like-minded brother across town. Find a space. Make a plan. And open the books.
Deep reading isn’t a detour from ministry — it serves to sustain it. Reading days may not be flashy, but they are fruitful. They can be a hidden yet profound way God uses to make your calling more thoughtful and joyful.
“Give yourself unto reading. … You need to read.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, “The Minister’s Self-Watch”
This week’s episode of the FTC Podcast begins an occasional feature where we talk to an expert on different books of the Bible. In this first Bible book episode, Jared Wilson talks with Dr. Patrick Schreiner, Assoc. Prof. of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Midwestern Seminary, about the book of Acts, Luke’s chronicle of the early church after Christ’s resurrection. What are the major themes? What do we make of some tricky texts? And what is the importance of this book for the average local church?
