Help Me Strengthen the Global Church
My name is Ken Nichols. I pastor a local church in Georgia, and I want to see God glorified among the nations. I have been given the tremendous opportunity to travel to South Asia in January, 2012 for the privilege of teaching and training pastors and leadership of a burgeoning Church Planting Movement among Hindu and Muslim background believers. Our goal is to train pastors, and thereby affecting the hundreds of new local churches that have sprung up in the last 18 months. The impact of our ministry to them will be hard to quantify, but the potential for great Kingdom impact in an area where God is moving is tremendous. I will be travelling with three other men from our local Baptist Association and we will be joining forces with a local IMB missionary. The...
Read MoreSpiritual Disciplines of a Healthy Church – Meaningful Membership
A healthy church understands the importance of, and practices, meaningful church membership. It is through active, meaningful membership in a local church that Christians live out the commands of Scripture.
Read MoreA Grieving God – Divine Regret
This was an excerpt of the manuscript from a sermon preached on May 17, 2009 at Sardis Baptist Church in Sardis, GA. What does it mean that God regrets? (1 Samuel 15:11, 29, 35) There exists in this text a question that needs to be asked and considered. What does it mean that God regrets or repents? We are told twice in this chapter that God regrets or repents. Then we are told that God does not. The issue is context. The word na?cham has quite a few meanings and its meaning is based on context. The word can mean “to suffer grief”, “to be moved to pity”, “to be sorry”, or “to change one’s mind”. So, first we have a word that has not just one meaning or sense, but that is flavored by the context. We have this...
Read MoreRedemption Through His Blood
I am currently participating in a book study group, going through John Stott’s “The Cross of Christ.” I have found this book nourishing my soul and bringing to my mind vivid images of the work of Christ on the Cross. In Chapter 7 Stott provides four images of salvation: propitiation, redemption, justification and reconciliation. As the Easter season approaches, I have felt drawn to the Cross in a fresh way by focusing on each of these images. This study entails my research on the Redemption image. Redemption re-dem´er, re-demp´shun , pa-rak, “to tear loose,” “to rescue,” , pa-dha-h, ga’al; , agora-zo, referring to purchase, lutrou-mai, from lu-tron, “a ransom”): (International Standard Bible...
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