Where shall we turn for instruction on how we ought to worship? There is only one place we can turn, and that is to the Word of God. The norm of our worship must be the Word of God–this Word that He has spoken. As we turn to this Word, we do see a pattern of worship, a pattern that is replicated throughout the fabric of Scripture from beginning to the end.

Surveying the literature on worship currently being published, and listening to the conversations currently taking place among the churches, one can quickly discern that worship is now one of the most controversial issues in the local congregation. As a matter of fact, many current book titles in the evangelical world suggest that what the church faces today is “worship warfare.” The very combination of the words “worship” and “war” should lead us to very sincere and sober biblical reflection. What is worship? And what does God desire that we should do in worship?

With amazing regularity, the national media take notice of the fact that, generally speaking, America’s conservative churches are growing while the more liberal churches are losing members. If this is news, it is almost a half-century old by now. What is going on?

The Brave New World we now experience is filled with a myriad of moral dilemmas–and none demands more urgent attention than those related to human reproduction and the massive technological advances that are related to human fertility and babies.

“In the twentieth century, for the first time, there was in the world a universal religion–the Christian religion. Christianity acclimated itself in every continent and in almost every country. In many areas that hold might be precarious, and its numbers small, yet in country after country the Christians evinced the power to be a dynamic minority. It took root, not as a foreign import, but as the Church of the countries in which it dwells.” With those words, historian Owen Chadwick updated Bishop Stephen Neill’s classic history of Christian missions. By the end of the twentieth century, the Christian missionary movement had reached around the globe. Still, the missionary challenge looms larger than ever before.

The death of Yasser Arafat brings to a close one of the most tumultuous and tragic lives of our times. The man William Safire would label “the only lifelong terrorist to win a Nobel Peace Prize” was a man of contradictions and controversy from the very start, and his death raises many questions about the future of the Palestinian people he led for almost forty years.

The history of the last century demonstrates that Western governments are exceedingly slow to respond to mass murder and genocide. This was true in 1915 when former President Theodore Roosevelt and American ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. attempted to convince President Woodrow Wilson to intervene as the Turks were slaughtering Armenians. Western nations stood by and allowed Rwandans to slaughter each other in 1994. “The only thing President Clinton did for Rwandan genocide victims was to issue a magnificent apology after they were dead,” Nicholas Kristof recalls. Now, genocide is unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan, and Western governments still debate whether or not the atrocity should rightly be called genocide.

By now, any observer with a modicum of moral insight is aware that marriage is an institution in crisis. Nevertheless, one of the most significant factors contributing to this crisis is often overlooked, and that one factor has led to the breakup of more marriages than any other–no-fault divorce.

The life of the preacher is a life of study, and it has been so from the very beginning. The Apostle Paul instructed Timothy to study so that he could present himself to God as an approved worker, “a worker who has no need to be ashamed” [2 Timothy 2:15]. This instruction came within the context of Timothy’s call as a preacher and teacher of God’s Word, and Paul’s instruction to Timothy is our Lord’s instruction to all who would preach and teach the Word of God.

The controversy over the casting of actor Chad Allen in the lead role of the movie The End of the Spear continues to grow — and rightfully so. Chad Allen is known for his very public homosexual activism. As a matter of fact, he has been on the cover of The Advocate, the leading homosexual news magazine, at least three times. What were they thinking? And how should Christians react?

Now facing its third millennium, the Christian church faces a moment of great historical importance and opportunity. The modern missionary movement is now over two centuries old. Looking back over those years, it is clear that God mobilized His people to make great strides in taking the gospel to many parts of the world. Today, the church faces new challenges. Without exaggeration, we can point to the twenty-first century as a new era in Christian missions, and recognize it as a vast new opportunity.

For the last two centuries or so, the intellectual elites have been predicting the triumph of secularization over belief in God. Thinkers ranging from Auguste Comte to Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx predicted that belief in God would evaporate as human beings gained control over the forces of nature–harnessing the power of steam in great engines, building dams across rivers to produce power, and gaining mastery over disease and physical impairments. Similarly, the prophets of the postmodern age have promised the demise of theism, arguing that belief in a personal and transcendent deity cannot survive the acids of contemporary conceptions of reality.