In the two months since the announcement that Sam Allberry has been declared disqualified from ministry by his church in Nashville, USA, quite a lot has been written.
It has been good to read many articles expressing compassion and personal support for and appreciation of him. This is right, and is often missing in responses to the fall from grace of gospel ministers.
There have also been some responses which can only be described as gloating over the downfall of someone seen as a theological enemy. This is particularly out of place for those who criticised Sam for having a weaker doctrine of sin than they do; if we believe this, then it very ill behoves us to speak as if we ourselves are more righteous than he is. No-one who can argue (as I do) that the desire to sin is sin, without trembling at their own guilt before the Lord and the magnitude of His mercy to them, has any business to be writing about the subject at all.
Too many of our churches offer no connection to God
In my home town of York in the 1960s, archaeologists discovered a stone pillar. It has originally towered nearly 10 …