Who leads a church? Why is this important to God?God cares about his glory, and he means to display his glory through the church. For this very end, God has established elders and deacons, members, and congregational authority. This primer on church structure connects the different offices of the church to one another and to the glory of God.

Congregational authority is less about the meetings and more about the mission.Congregationalism has a bad rap for well-known reasons: inefficient meetings, upstart members, browbeaten ministers. But biblical congregationalism isn’t so much about the meetings. It’s about empowering the whole church to promote and protect the gospel. Pastors lead and equip. Members get to work strengthening one another and pursuing Christ’s mission in the world.

How can the church move forward in unity amid such political strife and cultural contention?As Christians, we've felt pushed to the outskirts of national public life, yet even within our congregations we are divided about how to respond. Some want to strengthen the evangelical voting bloc. Others focus on social justice causes, and still others would abandon the public square altogether. What do we do when brothers and sisters in Christ sit next to each other in th...

Church membership is not just a status, it’s an office. Leaders shouldn’t fire members from the responsibilities given to them by Jesus—they should train them! When members are trained, the church grows in holiness and love, discipleship and mission. Complacency and nominalism are diminished.Jesus gives every church member an office in the church’s government: to assume final responsibility for guarding the what and the who of the gospel in the church and its mini...

An expert defense of how God's holy love is biblically, theologically, and practically represented to a watching world through the practices of church membership and discipline.

God means to fulfill the Great Commission through local churches.How did the apostles and the churches of the New Testament obey the Great Commission? By gathering Christians together in churches. The church is God’s plan for evangelism, discipleship, and the Great Commission. This connection between the Great Commission and the church dramatically impacts how both leaders and members should think about their work of making disciples. We do it together.

Everyone is looking for power. Political campaigns play to the power of fear and hope; advertising agencies rely on the power of appetite, both wielding power by the means of words.But churches have something different and better. Churches have the gospel. Though we live in the world, we must not wage war like the world, or fight with its weapons. On the contrary, we have divine power to demolish strongholds.The gospel consists merely of words, but those words have the unex...

Ours is an anti-polity age, perhaps more than any other time in the history of the church. Yet polity remains as important now as it was in the New Testament.What then is a right or biblical polity? The contributors to this volume make an exegetical and theological case for a Baptist polity. Right polity, they argue, is congregationalism, elder leadership, diaconal service, regenerate church membership, church discipline, and a Baptist approach to the ordinances.Each sectio...

The church is political.Theologians have been debating this claim for years. Liberationists, Anabaptists, Augustinians, neo-Calvinists, Radical Orthodox, and others continue to discuss the matter. What do we mean by politics and the political? What are the limits of the church's political reach? What is the nature of the church as an institution? How do we establish these claims theologically?Jonathan Leeman sets out to address these questions in this Studi...

Should we actually practice church discipline today? Is it unloving?Once an ordinary part of church life, churches gradually stopped practicing church discipline in the 20th century. But Jesus commands it. Paul practiced it. And churches benefit from it. Why practice church discipline? It shows love for the individual caught in sin, love for the whole church, love for non-Christian neighbors, and love for the glory of Christ.

What's the big deal about baptism?Jesus commands his disciples to be baptized, and it’s a glorious picture of a person’s union with Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Still, many Christians feel unclear about the topic, having more questions than answers. This short work provides a biblical explanation of baptism. What is it? Who should be baptized? Why is it required for church membership? And how should churches practice baptism?

Why did Jesus give the church a meal to eat together?The Lord's Supper isn't just something churches do together, it's something that binds us together, making many into one. This accessible work biblically explains what the Lord's Supper is, how it relates to a local church's life together, who should celebrate the Lord's Supper, and how we should approach it.