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The Big Journey is now available in audio from New Life Radio HERE. These audio recordings are in MP3 format. They’re a simplified version of the sixteen PDF pamphlets available on our home page. There are thirty talks, each between 15-20 minutes long. So by listening to just one short talk each day, you could take a journey through the whole Bible in just one month.

In this seminal and fascinating article, Clinton Arnold looks at how the early church trained new believers – and then poses some searching questions about how our present-day evangelical church approaches this task.

He writes: “For twelve years my wife and I were deeply involved in a ministry to new believers at our local church.  When we began developing this ‘assimilation’ ministry, we started with an eight-week course that covered many of the basics of the Christian life.  . . . .  The initial idea was for new believers to take the eight-week course as a primer in some of the basics of Christian doctrine and practice and then help them blend into the regular age-graded Sunday School program of the church.”  A number of constraints prevented this from working well.  One of these was the fact that “these new believers strongly felt the need for more of the same kind of teaching and discussions centered on the basics that they had just experienced.”

Dr. Arnold had also been doing some reading in the Church fathers about how new Christians were trained in the early church – training that often lasted for three years. He came away “deeply convicted about the superficiality of what we were doing. There was such a rigorous plan and commitment by church leaders in the first four centuries to ground new believers in their Christian lives. The impact of this reading on my thinking led to some significant changes in our new Christians’ ministry, especially the development of a ministry plan and curriculum that would keep them for two to three years.”

He continues “I have . . . continued to reflect critically on what we did in light of Scripture and early church practice. It has become increasingly clear to me that the evangelical church as a whole could benefit from re-examining the testimony of the Church fathers and gleaning insights from how they ministered to new believers. It may challenge many churches to consider implementing some modifications in philosophy and structure of ministry as they entertain questions such as:  • Is a four-week (six-week, or eight-week) new Christians’ class really enough?  • Are we getting new believers adequately immersed into the Scripture?  • Have we downplayed the importance of creed?  • Are we helping new believers repent completely of sinful life-styles and practices?  • Are we taking the spiritual warfare dynamic seriously enough in helping new believers grow?”

In this paper, Dr. Arnold gathers some insights from the ‘Apostolic Tradition’,  the earliest source providing us with detailed information about how the church trained new believers, together with some other ancient sources that speak about this practice.  He offers some thoughts on how the present-day church can learn from their forbears in the early church.

Dr. Arnold describes four key features of new believer training in the early Church:  (1) immersion in the Word of God – which included teaching them the overall sweep of God’s plan of redemption; (2) teaching them the central doctrines of Christianity; (3) spiritual and moral formation; (4) deliverance from Satanic influences, received through their old lives of paganism and magical practices.  He writes: “Part of the motivation and concern for a lengthy process was rooted in a desire to foster solid spiritual formation and to protect these new believers against sin, heresy, and apostasy.   . . . .   Cyril of Jerusalem reflects on the vital importance of this process of growth for the health and stability of these new believers: ‘Let me compare the catechizing to a building. Unless we methodically bind and joint the whole structure together, we shall have leaks and dry rot, and all our previous exertions will be wasted’ ”.   He comments: “By contrast, many evangelical churches today place a minimal emphasis on the training of new believers . . . .”

Key comments that Dr Clinton makes on each of these four points are:

(1)  “As we consider our contemporary evangelical churches, we need to ask ourselves how well we are doing in immersing new converts in the Word of God. Are they ‘hearing’ or reading through the bulk of the Scripture within the first three years of their walk with the Lord? Are they acquiring a grasp of the overall sweep of salvation history? Perhaps one of the greatest dangers we face is the assumption that this will somehow automatically happen once they are saved and part of the church. The lesson from the ancient church is that there was an intentional plan to facilitate this.”

(2) “Most evangelical churches today put little emphasis on providing training for new believers in the central doctrines. Some new believers’ classes cover a few of the cardinal doctrines, but a systematic training in the principal doctrines of historic orthodoxy are missing in the curricula for new believers.”

(3) “A hard question that we need to ask of ourselves is whether there is an intentional and structured part of the curriculum for ministering to new believers in our churches that addresses issues of life-style and Christian behavior in a direct way. Is there a process that helps new believers confront and deal with such sin issues as sexual impurity, bitterness, rebellion, greed, and unforgiveness as well as cultic involvements and adherence to false religious beliefs?”

(4)  “Perhaps more thought, study, and effort need to be given to the task of identifying how to integrate an appropriate form of this [deliverance] ministry into contemporary church practice, especially given that it was a universal feature of the ministry to new believers in the early church.”

Read the full article HERE. This article originally appeared in ‘Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society’ volume 47, number 1, for March 2004.  Clinton E. Arnold is a New Testament scholar and dean at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology.  He was the 2011 president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He has served as general editor of the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, and general editor of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, for which he wrote the volume on Ephesians.  He has also authored a number of books, such as ‘Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians’, and ‘Powers of Darkness: Principalities and Powers in Paul’s Letters’.

‘God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Story-Line of the Bible’, by Vaughan Roberts.  Published by Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, UK.  New edition.  First published in 2009.  ISBN 9781844743704 (paperback); 9781844747153 (Kindle version). 176 pages.

If I had to recommend just one brief overview of the Bible, this would be it.  In this book, Vaughan Roberts paints the big picture of the Bible, and he does so clearly and simply.  He takes us through the Bible using the theme of the Kingdom of God – defined as ‘God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing’.

Using this theme, Vaughan provides a simple and memorable framework for the Bible story:

(1) The pattern of the kingdom (Creation and the Garden of Eden)

(2) The perished kingdom (the fall)

(3) The promised kingdom (God’s covenant with Abraham)

(4) The partial kingdom (the period of the patriarchs to the Exile)

(5) The prophesied kingdom (the Old Testament prophets and the return from Exile)

(6) The present kingdom (Jesus life, death, resurrection and ascension)

(7) The proclaimed kingdom (the Acts of the Apostles through the whole Church age)

(8) The perfected kingdom (the Book of Revelation and the new heaven and earth).

‘God’s Big Picture’ is very suitable for newer believers and also young people.   But more seasoned believers will doubtless find Vaughan’s deft and simple handling of the Bible story helpful, too.

Bible passages for reading and questions for discussion accompany each of the eight chapters.  This makes ‘God’s Big Picture’ ideal for small group discussion.  And the fact that it covers the entire Bible in just eight lessons makes it tailor-made for new believers’ discipleship groups.  It would be ideal as a follow-up to an Alpha Course or a Christianity Explored course.

View the publisher’s description page HERE.

Vaughan Roberts is Rector of St Ebb’s Church, Oxford, England.  He is also a founder member of 9:38, which encourages Christians to consider full-time gospel ministry, and is on the leadership team of The Proclamation Trust.

‘The Ascension: Humanity in the Presence of God’, by Tim Chester and Jonny Woodrow.  Published by Christian Focus, Fearn, Ross-shire, UK, and WEST Porterbrook, Sheffield, UK.  First published in 2013.  ISBNs 978-1-78191-144-0 (paperback); 978-1-78191-210-2 (ePub); 978-1-78191-212-6 (Mobi). 94 pages.

View the publisher’s description page HERE.

There are few books that specifically focus on Jesus’s ascension.  And, in fact, His ascension is something about which we may give little thought; it may simply seem like a postscript to His life here on Earth.  But it’s a vital, ongoing part of His saving work for us.  As the authors point out, “Atonement was not complete until Jesus stood before God on our behalf.”  Jesus is our ascended Priest and King, our ‘Man in Heaven’ at our Father’s right hand.  A Member of our human race with a glorified physical human body is now in God’s presence, enthroned in absolute authority over Heaven and Earth!  And we, God’s people, are seated with Him there in heavenly places. We share His rule over Heaven and Earth.

This remarkable little book will likely transform the way you think of Jesus’s ascension.  It’s packed with insights drawn from across the whole Bible, communicated clearly and compellingly. Newer believers through to seasoned Bible scholars will find profit here.   The reader will come away with a richer understanding of Jesus’ life and ministry on Earth and now in Heaven.  And they’ll see more clearly the momentous significance Jesus’s ascension has for their Christian life here and now – and for their destiny in the world to come.

Perhaps the authors’ greatest achievement is to set the Ascension squarely into its context in the whole of God’s redemptive plan from creation to the new creation.  For example, they link Jesus’s ascension to Moses’ ascension of Mount Sinai and the sacrifices in the Tabernacle; to Daniel’s vision of the four beasts and the coming of the Son of Man and the Kingdom of God; to Jesus’s life as recorded by Luke; to the local church’s congregational worship; and to the Church’s global mission.

And the Ascension inevitably raises questions.  Where exactly is Jesus now?  Jesus is in heaven, yet He’s present with His people.  We live here on Earth, yet we’re seated with Him in the heavenly realms.  How does this all work in our universe of space and time?  Where exactly is heaven and how does it relate to our own world? And what happens when Jesus returns to Earth at the end of the age?  The authors guide us through this mysterious terrain. They comment, “Even on the final day, when Jesus does come to earth, He does not leave heaven behind.  . . . .  Instead, He brings heaven with Him to create a new heaven and a new earth. He does not leave heaven to collect us and take us back to heaven. He brings heaven to earth.”

And what has Jesus’s ascension done for us? Our calling and destiny is to be God’s royal family, made in His image to rule over His creation.  The authors explain that the ascended Jesus has realised this destiny: “The ascension of Jesus is the foretaste of the ascension of a new humanity to our royal status.”  And through His ascension, He has secured that destiny for every one of God’s people: “Those in Christ will . . . be what we were meant to be and what we were born to be.”

Jonny Woodrow is the Associate Director of Porterbrook Seminary and part of the leadership team of The Crowded House church planting network.  Tim Chester is an author, pastor of The Crowded House, Sheffield and a leader of The Crowded House church planting network.