Discipleship

The Role of Jesus’ Death in Luke’s Gospel

Kirk E. Miller

“Some describe the Gospels as accounts of Jesus’s death with really long introductions. Statements like this can downplay the bulk of the Gospels’ narratives, as though Jesus’s death were the only point of importance and everything else is just preliminary bonus material.

From another vantage point, however, this statement rightly communicates that nothing within the Gospels can be disconnected or properly understood apart from their climactic event: the death and resurrection of Christ. Everything that precedes leads up to the cross and occurs in its shadow.

But is this the case for the Gospel of Luke?”

Read Article

Themes & Theology of Mark’s Gospel (with Peter Orr)

Kirk E. Miller

In this episode, Kirk sits down with New Testament scholar, Dr. Peter Orr, for a conversation on theology and major themes of Mark’s Gospel. We discuss the identity of Jesus, the so-called “Messianic Secret,” the meaning of the cross and discipleship in Mark, the role of the temple in Mark, and much, much more. We hope this conversation helps you better understand the Gospel of Mark, even as you read it for yourself!

Access the episode here. (Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.)

The Church: Identity, Mission, & Cultivation

Kirk E. Miller

The below is a Gospel Life Course taught during May 2018 at CrossWay Community Church.

Week 1 — Introduction, Identity, & Mission
May 6th, 2018

Week 2 — Cultivation, pt. 1
May 13th, 2018

Week 3 — Cultivation, pt. 2
May 20th, 2018

Week 4 — Cultivation, pt. 3
May 27th, 2018

Stepping Up to the Plate: Every Member a Disciple-Making Disciple (Ephesians 4:7-16)

Kirk E. Miller

Stepping Up to the Plate: Every Member a Disciple-Making Disciple (Ephesians 4:7-16)
South City Church
August 27, 2017

Podcast link.

This sermon is a part of a series on the foundational principles of South City Church’s philosophy of ministry. See all content from this series.

John Stott on Comfortable Christianity

Kirk E. Miller

The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half-built towers [Luke 14:25-30] — the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so-called ‘nominal Christianity.’ In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved; enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience.

~ John Stott (Basic Christianity)

If our Christianity does not make us uncomfortable, if it does not disrupt or disturb us, if it leaves us where we are, then I’m afraid our Christianity is not Christ’s Christianity. We’ve fashioned a Jesus after our own image. And any Jesus, other than the Biblical Jesus, is not the saving Jesus.

“Take up your cross,” he said, i.e., “Following me means dying to yourself.”