word | spirit | world | church
Is the Church a 'Family?' An obvious yes, right? Except, where does it say that? You’re about to have a harder time than you expected. You might point to the use of genos in 1 Peter 2, though that’s usually translated ‘race’ and if we translated it family we would mean in the very broad sense that… Continue reading Stop Calling the Church a ‘Family’
What does our discipleship crisis look like? Our lives look the same as our neighbours and they shouldn’t. We don’t all have to be radical, but we do need a small number of radicals among us to help us see that our lives could be different. I do think ordinary faithfulness is the goal for… Continue reading We can’t think or live Christianly
Over the Summer, on Mondays, I’ll be reposting some of my favourite posts from nuakh. This post explores how Christians turn everything that should be an 'instrument' into a 'device.' Evangelicals love magic. On the face of it that doesn’t sound like a true statement, perhaps you remember the mild panic over Harry Potter in the… Continue reading Repost: When Christians Love Magic
To be a disciple is to be a learner or an apprentice. Discipleship isn’t a ‘thing’ that we sometimes do. Discipleship—or ‘followership’—is life. I've claimed the UK church is in a discipleship crisis, taking in our lives, our communities, and our minds. What does the first one of those look like? When you stick ‘-ship’… Continue reading ‘Discipleship’ is life
Over the Summer, on Mondays, I'll be reposting some of my favourite posts from nuakh. This post explores why Adam names the woman Eve in Genesis 3. In Genesis chapter 3, after the events that we usually call ‘the fall’ where the man and the woman are cursed along with the snake and the woman… Continue reading Repost: The Naming of Eve
We are in a discipleship crisis. Caused, perhaps, by the many other crises in the air, but here in the UK our faith is shallow. To be more precise: our churches are not forming us into deep and rich faith. I’ve been writing around this for a while, but I don’t think we’re talking about… Continue reading The Discipleship Crisis
When I started a blog during the long tail of Lockdown in 2020 it was already a long dead medium. I'd been encouraged to write regularly as a way of improving my writing and had tried working regularly on a few projects without managing to build a rhythm. I stumbled across Tim Challies' article on… Continue reading On Blogging
I’ve been blogging around Matthew Lee Anderson’s Called into Questions over the last few months. It’s a great book, though difficult, that Pastors should give some extended reflection to. We turn at the end to God’s questions. Anderson comments: “Hearing God’s questions is the cost of our freedom to question God.” Called into Questions, 23.… Continue reading God’s Questions
“In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by a way … of ignorance” says Eliot in East Coker. Commenting on this, Matthew Lee Anderson says, “It is a truth that is easy to write, but difficult to live out. Yet we can only learn when we are free to… Continue reading Learning not to know
Your church shouldn’t be too easy to join. This is probably counter-intuitive to many, we spend such a lot of time trying to remove barriers to welcome people into church and often in really helpful ways, but let me try and show you my thinking. Nor is this a bait-and-switch where I’ll end by saying… Continue reading Don’t be too easy to join
nuakh 