I recently preached on Ephesians 2:1-10 at Brookside Church - a passage which I would say "pound for pound" is the best ten-verse spotlight on God's amazing grace that we find in the New Testament.

Here's a quick outline of the passage at a glance:

Did you miss some of the most frequented posts at the Brookside Institute recently? It's not too late!

Based on the number of "hits" each month, here's our highlight reel of the top 5 posts here on the Brookside Institute blog for the last six months - January 2018 through June 2018.

​Take a minute to scroll through the list below, and either catch up on things you may have missed or revisit things that were especially helpful.

I love to teach. I believe that a healthy teaching ministry is vital to the life of a vibrant local church. And I want to emphasize a healthy, deeply-understood gospel centrality as I teach. 

Since that's the case, I'm grateful for how Trevin Wax - Bible and resource publisher at Lifeway Christian Resources - articulates what gospel-centered teaching looks like in this brief (less than 3 min) video clip. I'm including it here, both to circulate good content via this site, and to keep it for handy reference for the future! :)

I've mentioned a few times already on this site that theology is important in and for the life of the church, but that sound theology isn't the ONLY the thing a church should be concerned with. Here's one short excerpt from a previous post:

We need to keep this mind - in all the ways this quote highlights and more.

But I also want to keep my foot on the gas pedal of the important - essential! - contribution that sound theology does make in and for the life of the local church.

I love how Keith Johnson brings this out in his recent Theology as Discipleship (p. 77). Read this slowly:

Let's not abandon this "specific commission" Johnson calls us to. We need to champion theology, we need to create space to read and study theology, and we need to teach theology. As we do this, our posture is one of service. Our goal is to faithfully align with God's self-revelation in the Bible (no more, but no less) to equip the church in her prayer, worship, preaching, service, and witness.

The local church needs the essential contribution theology makes.

We're just wrapping up the "Things to Fight For" series that we've been in the last few weeks. (I encourage you to go online to www.brookside.net and listen to the sermons. Go to our messages link and find the sermons preached May 21-July 02, 2017.)

Each week, we've looked closely at the Bible to see what it says about the following topics:

• Fight for a Thriving Marriage - Ephesians 5:21-33
• Fight for Vibrant Faith - Colossians 1:28-29
• Fight for the Next Generation - Psalm 78:1-8
• Fight for Your Identity - 1 Peter 2:9-10
• Father's Day (special speaker Myron Pierce) - Matthew 3:14-17
• Fight for Effective Influence - Esther 4:12-16
• You Have to Fight to Fight - Galatians 6:9 and 1 Corinthians 15:58

To help Brooksiders get and stay "in the fight" in these areas, each week we've also been recommending books that will drill down more deeply into each of the topics. These book recommendations are a great way to multiply an ethos of equipping in the life of the church.

I figured it'd be worthwhile to collect ALL of the book recommendations across the entire series, and put them in one place. Check out what follows for the books we recommended each week during this "Things to Fight For" series:

Something big happens in Acts 2 - it's one of THE pivotal events of the Bible. 

Before Acts 2, things are fairly still. We find Jesus’ first disciples huddled in an Upper Room. After Acts 2, we find Jesus’ disciples spreading out through Jerusalem, into the larger region, and even getting to Rome! (Which is a long way, especially when there aren’t airplanes or cars.) Something happens in Acts 2 that changes the playing board and Jesus’ followers go from huddled together to spreading out on mission!

Before Acts 2, we know that the sum total of Jesus followers was about 120. That’s not a lot of people! By the time we get to the end of Acts 2, we learn that number has multiplied to 3000 people - and then if you keep reading into Acts 4 you find that pretty quickly that number jumps from 3000 to 5000! Something happens in Acts 2 that catalyzes this exponential growth !

Something happens in Acts 2 where the gate opens up and the picture changes from preparation and anticipation to one of bold movement and fresh life! There's no way to exaggerate how pivotal of a turning point Acts 2 is in the story of the church!

​So the question we should all be asking now is this: “What happens in Acts 2?!” What happens that propels the early church forward in all of these ways?  And what does all this mean for our lives TODAY?

To dig into these questions, check out this sermon I preached on "The Gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:1-47) earlier this year.

Every now and then I try to take some time and reflect on why the intentional teaching ministry of the church remains important. Whatever shape it takes, why is equipping and a teaching in the church, for the church, and by the church valuable? 

At least one reason is the growth of secularism, pluralism, and "indifferentism" in America. Very simply stated, secularism is a worldview that pushes God to the margins. It's fine to believe in God on your own, the secularist may say, just don't bring any religious ideas or reasoning into the public square. Pluralism flows out of the reality that we are surrounded by people who believe very different things than than us - and it often goes a step further to say the no one religion can be exclusively true. "Indifferentism" (this is my term, I think) tries to explain the religious apathy of the "nones" and "dones" - those who adhere to no single religious expression (the "nones") or those who have "tried out" some religion and - for whatever reason - didn't stick with it.

So what does all this have to do with catechesis - an intentional and systematic approach to teaching in the local church? Here's what:

​​I’ll get right to the point of what I’m writing about today. Here it is: Character counts. Who you are on the inside is a really big deal. The attitudes you have swirling around inside of you, and the values you have - these are way more important than people often think.

I’m generally a fan of superhero movies, so let me pull an example from one of the Spiderman movies. You know the story: Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider and can start doing all this crazy stuff like climbing all walls, he has super strength, and more. In the movie I’m thinking of, Peter Parker - that’s Spiderman - is just starting to realize what he can do with these powers. The thing is, early on he’s not always using his powers well. He’s using his powers in ways that are selfish.

And so Peter’s uncle, Uncle Ben, sees some of what’s going on and he pulls Peter aside and he says these words that are now at the level of "movie quote trivia legend" - even my 8 year olds could finish this line, even though I don't think they’ve never seen the movie. Uncle Ben tells Peter, “With great power comes great responsibility.” (Ready for a video clip? Check out the scene here.)

Peter was so blown away by the power he had that he wasn’t thinking about how to use it. Peter was so impressed by what he could do, that he’d taken his eyes off of who he was becoming.

Here’s why I bring all that up: Christianity isn’t primarily about what you’re doing for God (though that has its place); it’s also about who you’re becoming. We can't get so focused on the things God can do THROUGH us that we ignore who we're becoming. Character counts!

This is one of the things that you can't miss as you study the Holy Spirit. 

The more you read your Bible and the more you learn about the Holy Spirit, you’ll see that the Spirit gives every believer in Jesus Christ spiritual gifts that empower us to do great things for God and His church. It’s awesome to know the Spirit of God works through us to accomplish God’s work!

But that’s not all we want to say. Just as importantly, the Spirit is also working inside of us - each of you individually - transforming our character from the inside out.

The Apostle Paul gives us a list of big ways the Holy Spirit should be transforming us from the inside out in Galatians 5:22-23: “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (NIV, 1984).

You see that Paul calls these things the “fruit” of the Holy Spirit. Here’s what he’s getting at: If I planted an apple tree in my back yard I’d eventually expect to see apples growing on it. Eventually that apple seed should produce something in my yard - fruit! Apples!

So too when the Holy Spirit is in our lives, something should happen! Our character - who we are on the inside - should be different! Over the course of time and in increasing ways, the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives should produce this fruit in us - love, joy, peace, patience, and so on.

All this means what we’re talking about in this post is REALLY important. This list of the fruit of the Spirit isn’t some random collection of nice things to consider if you’ve got the time and are interested. This is a clear list of the things that Spirit wants to do in you. This is a clear list of the difference the Holy Spirit should be making inside of all of us.

​With all this in mind, then, I want to spend the rest of our time together today asking this question: How can the fruit of the Spirit grow in my life? I’m going to mention three things that followers of Jesus need to keep in mind.

If you ever check out the footer of this site, where we highlight the top 5 posts of the previous month, you'll have seen "Gregg Allison on the Importance and Role of Christian Education in the Local Church" has been on a #1 streak for a while (a long while!). And it's understandable why. Allison's excerpt resonates so closely with values that keep people coming back to this Brookside Institute site: multiplying ideas for equipping the church, theological formation, and more. (If you've not checked out the post, you can do so here.)

So as a nod of honor to Allison's material, I'm officially going to "retire the jersey." I'll leave the post just as it is on the site and will create a "retired jersey" category in the top posts section of this site's footer. However, moving forward I'll no longer include it in numbers 1-5 of each month's top post (even it continues to dominate the website "hits" for individual posts), thus allowing room for other posts.

Interested in other posts that have gotten a lot of traffic on this site recently? Click here to check 'em out!