Our churches should seek to fight the American pastime of loneliness. We want to push against the cultural call to isolation and push into the gospel call to loving our neighbor. The Christian life is hard enough as it is. Isolation makes it only harder.

Some of us are more outgoing than others. Some of us can talk in groups better than one-on-one. But all of us have a responsibility to welcome others into the church God has called us to. There are countless ways to do this, but for those who find it hard to know where to start, here are six ways to greet new people on Sunday.

Paul closes his letter to the Romans with a list of greetings. In our Bible study with my brothers of Refuge Church a few weeks ago, we looked at this passage and fought to mine some usefulness out of it. What do you make of a list of names, most of which we know very little about outside of Paul's brief comments?

Paul puts the burden of building and maintaining gospel culture on the shoulders of the strong. He is not excusing the weak. He’s simply telling the strong that they set the tone.

Many churches never go beyond Romans 1.

We want to be sure the God we think of is the real God of the Bible, not the false god of our imagination. We want to relate to him rightly, and that happens when we get to know him. 

We live in an age of differences. If you follow Christian Twitter, for example, you will see disagreement every day over what appears to be a minute detail. I can't keep up with the outrage. I often step back and ask myself, “Where is the love in this discussion? Where is the place for real disagreement with real unity in Christ? Must I chose one side in order to belong?”

Leadership change in the church should not be a cause for alarm. It should be a cause for rejoicing.

Here are 10 ways you can encourage your pastor, or pastors.

Here are five indicators that a church is on its way to experiencing gospel culture.