word | spirit | world | church
The seed that dies is the one that bears fruit. That’s what Jesus said in John 12, Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12.24 A biologist might take issue with us saying… Continue reading Bearing Fruit
I’ve argued that we’re in a discipleship crisis in the charismatic church in the UK. Friends from wider spheres of evangelical churches in the UK and elsewhere seem to agree. I’ve tried to plot some sense of what that looks like and why that might be the case. We’ve explored a model of formation, seeing… Continue reading The Rule of Life
I’ve come across some churches I know teaching something like this in relation to what we’ve all started calling ‘diversity.’ I think it’s nonsense. By ‘diversity’ we mean specifically racial diversity, which is one of those funny quirks of language which I think I’ve noticed stops people from seeing other kinds of diversity. Which, particularly… Continue reading “You can only be what you can see”
Christian Formation IV Our formation involves our minds, freeing them from sin and growing in knowledge of God, and our lives—learning habits and being embedded in Christian community—but it also involves our hearts. To grow to be like Christ is to gradually change our loves, to war for them, so that we love God above… Continue reading The Matter of the Heart
Glen Scrivener likes to say that pastoral care is evangelism for Christians, and evangelism is pastoral care for those who aren’t Christians. There’s a lot of insight in that aphorism, but one angle is to notice that you’re doing the same thing when you talk to your friends in church to your friends outside: you’re… Continue reading Church is Our Evangelism Strategy
Christian Formation III If we’re formed by what we think, what we feel, and what we do—as I’ve argued we are—how does being formed by what we think work? You do actually need to learn the faith. We balk at this, for good reasons. Can knowledge of the Bible puff up rather than lead us… Continue reading You Need to Learn the Faith
The ‘slippery slope’ is considered a logical fallacy. If I argue against your desire to do one thing because it will inevitably lead to another then I’m engaging in this fallacy. If you go and read a definition of the fallacy it might identify it as an ‘informal’ fallacy because the error lies not in… Continue reading Doctrinal drift
Christian Formation II If we’re formed by what we think, what we feel, and what we do—as I’ve argued we are—how does being formed by what we do work? I think there are two components to this: community and habit. We become what we do. James K. A. Smith’s famous ‘pedagogy of desire’ argues that… Continue reading You Become What You Do, and Who You Do It With
Men don’t know how to be friends anymore. Have you noticed? Ancient literature expected men to have close friends, who could bitterly betray them if they proved false and be the close loves of their hearts when they proved true. We could think of Achilles and Patroclus, Damon and Pythias, or for an example that… Continue reading We Can’t Be Friends
I’ve highlighted what I consider to be a discipleship crisis, where we separate discipleship from ‘life’ and we struggle to live Christianly. I’ve then tried to outline five reasons why our faith has grown shallower. It’s important to try and understand problems before we try to solve them. I’d welcome pushback on that sketch of… Continue reading What is Christian Formation?
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