Entries by mattkottman

My Church Is The Best!

The Church is a display of God’s beauty and grace to the world. It is in the church that the world gets the chance to glance at God as people indwelt by God interact one with another. Jesus is manifest through a Body. God has even ordained his manifold wisdom to be made known to […]

Perspective

Like-mindedness is a great thing. I love working together with those who are reading from the same page as me. Having theological, philosophical, and relational unity in ministry is no small thing. For the ministry in our church, these seem to be concentric circles. The depth of ministry I have with others seems to filter through these […]

Pattern of Prayer

Often when we study the Scriptures, we look at verses, pericopes, and chapters. Recently, in considering prayer, I was curious how often prayer occurred in the book of Acts as a whole. I often hear people say things like “we need to get back to the book of Acts”. Dealing with this phrase is worthy […]

Church Plants vs. Established Churches

Is it better to be part of a church plant, or an established church? I don’t know that one is better than the other. But these are some observations I have had comparing the two. They are definitely generalizations. Most (if not all) of the bloggers here on Cross Connection are more experienced than I […]

Sinkhole

Several years ago, I read Gordon MacDonald’s book “Ordering Your Private World.” He begins by describing sinkholes in Florida. Water aquifers drain leaving a subterranean void that will, without any notice, give way. Suddenly a house sinks into a massive hole; all the while nobody expected it. A little over a year ago, I fell […]

Kingdom Minded

During the London 2012 Olympics, the road race passed right through our area of greater London. It was exciting to stand at the sidelines and cheer the cyclists on. I loved the strategy of Team GB, which was made up of five men. Their goal was simple. Each member of the team would take turns […]

Why Preach? (Part 2)

In my last post, we began looking at preaching. We considered the 1. Purpose of Preaching and the 2. Command to Preach. In this post I want to add three more aspects of preaching: 3. Preaching under Fire, 4. God’s Word has Power and Authority, and 5. Stewardship of Preaching. 3. Preaching Under Fire In […]

Why Preach? (Part 1)

Recently I was speaking with a minister here in London who suggested that preaching is old-fashioned and doesn’t connect to the current generation. I will concede that preaching styles do change over generations as the same message is contextualized into our various contexts. The purpose of this post is to give a biblical defense of […]

The Story of God’s Presence (Part 2)

In my previous post we looked at God’s presence in the Old Testament. Let’s look at how God is moving from Eden, the Tent, and the Temple, into the New Testament. Jesus A new day dawned after four hundred years of silence. The presence chamber (Holy of Holies) in the Temple was vacant, but God’s […]

The Story of God’s Presence (Part 1)

The Bible is a story, not an encyclopaedia. To find a topic in an encyclopaedia, just turn to the letter “G” to read about God, turn to the letter “M” to learn about Messiah. The Bible doesn’t work this way. By story, I do not mean fiction, but rather an unfolding message. The Bible isn’t […]