Starting and leading a local church
a short book on preliminary things to heed before starting the pastor search.
BiblicalViewpoint Tools for Bible Exposition is a short 2 page work on tools (books) on Hermenuetics. Biblical Viewpoint is a magazine for seminary students and pastors from the Bible faculty at Bob Jones University. This excerpt is presented as a fair use of a small part of the magazine for April 1971.
Let’s start with a definition of what is a missionary. A missionary is very simply a man of God who has the charge from God to carry the gospel message into a land where the gospel is not present, or is not abundant, and he organizes the converts of his evangelism into local churches which continue the work of the Lord after he is gone.
We do not find the work “missionary” in the Bible, but the concept is correctly identified in persons such as Paul, Barnabas, Luke, Mark, Titus, Timothy, and others. Technically missionaries have to be sent out from a group, and there are no “home missionaries” per se. Home missionaries confuse completely the concept of missionaries. Should those who are home missionaries now cease their ministries? No. They should be understood as being a part of a church in their area.
What is a biblical New Testament Church? There is a principle that says, you cannot hit a target if you don’t know what it is. Simply put, we as “church” cannot be “church” if we don’t have a firm concept of what “being the church” consists of. I read works by people who attack and are antagonistic to the traditional church (mostly negativism), and those who would transform it into something else.
Fixing a Ruined Church is an article and suggestions on how to fix a ruined, sick church by getting back to the basics of what a church is and should be.
I read an article named, 4 Starter Ideas for the Care and Treatment of an Unhealthy Church (a good article by the way), and in it, it mentions some tips on how to “treat” the patient of an unhealthy church. From that general idea I want to expand on some of my thoughts of that post.
