word | spirit | world | church
What’s the story of the church? How do we fit into God’s grand plan? It runs something like this: God created the world with the aim of making his name great by demonstrating the worth, glory and character of God the Son. It was his good pleasure to do so by making lesser beings and… Continue reading The Church’s Story
The Bible often compares churches to buildings (e.g. 1 Peter 2). Which can sometimes sound a little odd on ears brought up on the resounding cry that the “church is the people not the building.” I appreciate that we probably needed the refrain, I live in a country dotted with beautiful relics of ancient churches.… Continue reading Renovating the Church
We are the people who talk about death. Though I doubt many of us think of Christianity that way. Our whole message centres on death: a single death and the defeat of Death through it. We should be talking death each week, to bolster the saints and retell the story. Our rituals are gory: we… Continue reading The people who talk about death
The gathered church sings. That’s what we do. It’s not the only thing we do, but it is what we do. For millennia, since song joined sacrifices in Israel’s worship at the dedication of Jerusalem’s Temple in David and Solomon's liturgical reforms, the people of God have sung. In innumerable styles, with words sublimely profound… Continue reading Sing when you’re losing
This article in the New York Times describes two tools that Facebook are developing for churches. Firstly, a subscription service, “where users pay, for example, $9.99 per month and receive exclusive content, like messages from the bishop” and secondly a prayer service “where members of some Facebook groups can post prayer requests and others can… Continue reading Commercialising Church
Our home has a beautiful garden—it’s a large part of why we bought the tumble-down shell we’ve lovingly formed into something beautiful. We live in a large city, so its 45-metre-long stretch is quite something. It brings my wife much joy. In the early days of living here, when we had one finished room, barely… Continue reading One sows, another reaps
I’m a charismatic, and plenty of others who would claim that label believe some fairly kooky things. It thus occasionally falls to us to carefully disassociate ourselves from what others might believe. It’s pretty normal that we would occasionally denounce what is commonly called the ‘Prosperity Gospel’—essentially that if you follow the way of Jesus… Continue reading When I believe the prosperity gospel
I’ve spent much of my working life in or around education. I worked for an education charity, I trained to teach and taught in secondary schools, I ran training courses and designed award-winning global graduate programmes, I was a pedagogic expert at a University and now manage quality assurance in a small corner of another.… Continue reading On Education
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 Reclaiming Friendship
We live in an age of expressive individualism. This is a bad thing. While any sort of individualism is a product of Christianity, the form of individualism we currently have that places my desires squarely at the top of the hierarchy of goods is deeply destructive to society, to individuals, and to the church. Once… Continue reading 5 Antidotes to individualism
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