Dr Paul Allen

By Thomas West I live in London as someone inspired by two missionaries to Western culture. One is Lesslie Newbigin, a cross-cultural missionary sent to India who later returned to England. The other is Tim Keller, a church planter who established a thriving evangelical congregation in the middle of Manhattan. Today, Keller’s life and ministry are being celebrated following his recent death. Keller showed us how to connect with, confront, and call to Christ a culture with the gospel, doing this, of all places, in New York. His love for the city and his theological vision inspired my family to move to London to plant a church. I first encountered the works of Newbigin and his missionary perspective while a seminary student. I also learned of the Stone Lectures delivered by Newbigin at Princeton in 1989, where he famously called the church to “a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and modern Western culture.” In 2017, Keller gave the Kuyper Lecture at Princeton titled “Answ...

God is always at work in this world in everybody’s life. “He works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). And when we come to Christ, we are given a perspective on that prior work that is true and helpful. It is a cause for thankfulness in us, and it’s a cause for the benefit to others. In other words, we experience it as worship, and we experience it, hopefully, as witnesses. Double Brightness Before we turn to Christ, there is, so to speak, a veil over our eyes so that we can’t interpret what’s happening in our lives in its proper relationship to God before we’re Christians. In a profound sense, we are blind to what God is doing in our lives. So we can’t tell any true stories about God’s work in our lives before our eyes are open to see what he’s really doing in our lives. But when we come to Christ, the veil is lifted, and we see our past life for what it really is, both in its darkness and in the bright light of God’s work in it. So here’s the text that ...

What’s the big deal with fearing man? What’s the problem with trying to impress one another? The desire for peer approval, that dopamine hit we get when we impress others, that desire to be admired — what’s the problem with it all? Well, on Monday we looked at 1 Peter 3:15. There we saw the commission that we honor Christ or revere Christ in our hearts. It’s a text about fearing God. And it brought to mind a sermon Pastor John preached 42 years back in the fall of 1980. I wanted to share a clip from that old sermon today. Here’s 34-year-old Pastor John to explain this connection between revering to Christ and dying to the approval of others. What is this reverencing the Lord Christ in our hearts?   What’s this amazing thing that has the power to turn the fear of men into hope and the power to always give us a reason for the hope that is in us that we can speak to others? Now, to answer that question in accord with the immediate context, what we need to do — instead of importing our...

 They refuse to believe they are not saved. They're offended! “Although hypocrites and other unregenerate people may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God, and estate of salvation (which hope of theirs shall perish): yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavouring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.” (Westminster Confession of Faith 18:1) This section teaches that unregenerate people may possess a false sense of assurance but that genuine believers may attain a true sense of assurance. Assurance must be considered for the four kinds of people in the world. 1. The first group of people are not saved and are aware that they are not . They are unregenerate and they know it. They have no interest in becoming Christians...

Generally speaking, these are defined as populations with little to no access to the Gospel. There is, however, much disagreement over what constitutes an unreached country. The IMB, for example, considers any country with less than a 2% evangelical presence as unreached. While the Joshua project (which has been so helpful in shedding the light on the unreached), on the other hand, would agree with the 2% evangelical number, but in order to consider a country unreached it would also expect a less than 5% “christian” number. The “christian” 5% would include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox and Roman Catholics, which would make predominantly Roman Catholic and Orthodox countries reached by their standards. In the IMB world, the Italian people would be considered unreached, but in the Joshua project world, Italy is very reached with over 90% of the people considering themselves “Christian.” Christians need a more appropriate view of Roman Catholicism.  The question ...

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” ( Ephesians 2:1 ) Three concise descriptions are given in Scripture of how God sees all sinners prior to the creation of the second birth in us. We were dead in trespasses (activities) and sins (character, attitude, condition).  The result was that we were unable to understand or seek God on our own ( Romans 3:10-11 ).  Nor are we able to know the things of God by our own intellectual prowess ( 1 Corinthians 2:14 ). We “walked according to the course of this world” ( Ephesians 2:2 ), in bondage to the world ( Galatians 4:3 ) and blinded by Satan ( 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 ). We are by “nature the children of wrath” ( Ephesians 2:3 ). Both our natural desires ( Ephesians 5:5-6 ) and our willing unbelief ( John 3:36 ) put us under an ever-increasi...

The Legendary Teaching on Titus 1 :6 We have a huge problem in our churches: men who are clearly unqualified to serve as pastors. First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 both list the qualifications for being a pastor. And if someone does not meet these qualifications, it is improper and unbiblical for them to serve in this way. One verse in particular illustrates the dire situation our churches are in with these unqualified men leading them: “If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination” (Titus 1:6 ESV ). This verse has five requirements to be a pastor, but I want to focus on one: “his children are believers.”  Learn more at www.hopecollege.com This phrase automatically disqualifies anyone from being a pastor if they have a child who is not a Christian. Why would Paul say you can’t be a pastor if your children aren’t saved? Because pastors are supposed to lead by example. If you put a ma...

All believers have the desire to be faithful ambassadors for Christ. We want to bring the message of salvation to those around us. But like a deer in headlights we tend to freeze up instead of joyfully sharing the lifesaving news we possess. Like a diabetic rationalizing himself into eating that piece of cheesecake, Christian’s justify their disobedience with some well-crafted excuses. I’d like to help squash some excuses so that when we have the opportunity nothing would come in the way of those around us hearing about the hope that’s only found in Christ. I’ll do more harm than good Some seem to think that if they make mistakes, they may end up leading someone further away from Christ. While I do believe that there are “evangelists” out there who do more harm than good , I do not think that the average, gentle Christian can. You do more harm than good not by being unable to answer a hard question but by having a bad attitude while sharing your faith. It is those who are angry, a...

"A Calvinist evangelist? Isn't that an oxymoron? Calvinism undermines evangelism." This accusation has been repeated so many times that few make the effort to argue it. Instead, it is simply assumed. Never mind that some of the church's greatest evangelists have been Calvinists. One need only be reminded of men such as George Whitefield, David Brainerd, or "the father of modern missions," William Carey. "Yes," we are told, "these men were great evangelists and Calvinists, but that is because they were inconsistent." But is this true? The fact of the matter is that Calvinism is not inconsistent with evangelism; it is only inconsistent with certain evangelistic methods. It is inconsistent, for example, with the emotionally manipulative methods created by revivalists such as Charles Finney. But these manipulative methods are themselves inconsistent with Scripture, so it is no fault to reject them. In order for evangelism to be pleasing ...