word | spirit | world | church
I launched nuakh by describing my desire to write cold takes, to not publish quickly or flippantly, but to wait to share my writing. Typically, I’ve been waiting around 3 months to do so. Occasionally this throws up some odd circumstances, like when I wrote about how the country felt after the Queen’s death two… Continue reading On Cold Takes
We live in what Charles Taylor calls a ‘culture of Authenticity,’ one where the primary values are autonomy, individuality, authenticity, and freedom. Which, since some churches talk about freedom a lot, can be confusing, because I’m not sure we mean the same thing. The freedom our churches talk about is the kind where you get… Continue reading Finding freedom from freedom
A niche topic, perhaps, but very popular in the businesses I’ve worked in, and reasonably popular in the church worlds I’ve worked in too. I suspect most readers know someone who has talked about their Enneagram number or Myers-Briggs Type Index (MBTI), perhaps you even like thinking this way yourself. How should Christians think about… Continue reading On Personality Profiling
My last two thoughts for now on the Eucharismatic ‘manifesto’ that I sketched. Regularity and Form I’ve drawn a doctrine of the church that maps four encounters with God: Baptism, Lord’s Supper, Preaching, and Contributory Worship. It’s not wildly different from lots of Protestant versions, it’s essentially word and sacrament, with the charismatic addition being… Continue reading Two final Eucharismatic Words
“Well if God’s called you, it’ll work out.” I’ve been told this lots of times myself, I think I believe it half of the time. But it’s not true. Not in the way we mean it anyway. What we’re saying is, you’re going to do this risky seeming thing on the basis of your faith… Continue reading Success looks like obedience
The Church’s worship should include the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, with the gathered people of God eating and drinking Jesus’ body and blood together in order to receive from him. The Lord is the host who has laid the table for us. This is the plank of my eucharismatic manifesto which makes the charismatic… Continue reading A Eucharismatic Supper
I’ve come across the idea, a few times recently, that the Bible doesn’t speak to everything. In the context I’m hearing it, this means that there are lots of matters of faith and practise that the Bible doesn’t tell us what to do on, so we have to figure it out for ourselves. Which is… Continue reading The Bible doesn’t speak to that
Every member of the church is meant to participate in the church’s gathered worship, because the Bible insists that we do. Continuing my series on my Eucharismatic manifesto, I’d like to talk about the importance of what we might call ‘worship,’ but I’ve referred to as ‘prayer.’ I’ve deliberately shifted the language because I want… Continue reading Worshipping in Spirit
It surprises many people I talk to, but it’s true that the more you do something the more you like it. Most of us assume that we keep things special by only doing them occasionally. There is a pleasure that comes from the occasional activity, but what we love we do. Our tastes are formed… Continue reading We Love What We Do
I’ve argued before that British Christians don’t know their Bibles, and I’d like to push that thought a little further. I think there are a set of nested problems that inform and intensify each other, I’ll briefly touch on each in turn, mention what I understand some of the causes of this to be and… Continue reading We don’t know our Bibles
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