word | spirit | world | church
Stretching Minds III If we want to see a renewal of our collective Christian mind to alleviate our discipleship crisis, we will have to think beyond Sundays. I’ve got a number of suggestions to make across this series, but this is a posture more than a specific idea: we need to go where our people… Continue reading Go where your people are
In my church world we can be a little allergic to writing things down. In my understanding this initially came from a reaction against a sort of formalism that was being clearly rejected. The necessity of relationship was emphasised instead. I think we’ve lost something that we should recover. There’s a trend, though not a… Continue reading Write Something Down
Stretching Minds II How can we disciple the minds of our churches? Consider everything a teaching opportunity. What are you already doing, how are you already communicating? Those things already teach people, so be deliberate about it. The most obvious example to me would be the ways that you communicate information. Perhaps you send a… Continue reading Teach Everywhere You Can
I’ve had the privilege of touring a few churches in my city in the last few weeks. A rare treat in its own way, to praise with different brothers and sisters and to see how other people do things. It’s completely unfair to judge any church from one Sunday, and I won’t say which churches… Continue reading Preach the Gospel
We’re at the confluence of a few different currents in our cultures that influence our preaching. We’re in a discipleship crisis, where many Christians don’t know the faith. The knowledge of Christianity in the wider world is diminishing, certainly younger people aren’t reacting against it they simply aren’t familiar with it. At the same time… Continue reading Preaching with Weight
In my church tradition—the conservative end of the British new church movement or ‘reformed charismatic’—it’s normal that we engage in what we call ‘contributory worship.’ Essentially this means that at the same point in our worship when we’re singing songs, members of the church will pray, read from the Bible, and use spiritual gifts. Lots… Continue reading On Microphones
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”
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
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
Why is our Faith Shallow III How does the average new Christian in your church learn the faith? I’m sure you have some sort of membership process and maybe run some different programmes but I wonder how many churches have a rigorous way to do this? I suspect most would answer with, “the same way… Continue reading We Stopped Catechising
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