This class considers nine marks that distinguish a healthy, biblical church from its less healthy sisters. These characteristics focus on certain crucial aspects that have grown rare in today’s churches. Whether you are a pastor, lay leader, or involved member of a congregation, you can help cultivate these elements in your church, bringing it new life and health for God’s glory.

 

God intends for us to play an active and vital part in the body of Christ, the local church, and wants us to experience it as a home more profoundly wonderful and meaningful than any other place on earth. This class explains how membership in the local church can produce spiritual growth in its members and how each member can contribute to the growth and health of the whole.

 

God is serious about the transformation of his people into Christ-likeness. And he has equipped his people to be instruments in his hands for this great purpose. This class will take time to consider God’s vision for Christian growth and the unique and unavoidable role every believer plays as counselors one to another.

 

The relationship between the Church and the human government God calls her to submit to has been a complex and often debated issue for Christians. Should Christians lobby the state to obey God’s law? Should we have any participation in politics and government at all? Must believers obey the state at all times? These are some of the questions this class intends to address while presenting a biblical understanding of God’s design for temporal human government and how we are to relate to it as citizens of an eternal Kingdom.