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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
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?
Dust hung in the air. My skin was rough from living in this house for so long. The taste thick at the back of my mouth, though I was getting used to it. Somehow that was the scary bit. It was brick dust, the one with the thicker, grittier texture and almost biscuity taste: dry… Continue reading The Mess of Making
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
There is no greater unknown, no more difficult question that we can face, than whether we are ready to die. Matthew Lee Anderson, Called into Questions, 35. I think he’s right. We are scared of death. We live in a culture scared of death. It’s much commented on that the Victorians seemed prudish (to us)… Continue reading The art of dying
It’s Christianese for “I want to.” Maybe that’s harsh, but I suspect most readers have thought that too. I’ve had many conversations where someone is suggesting doing something which is somewhere on the spectrum between ‘surprising’ and ‘deeply unwise,’ where they tell me that God has called them to do it. I suspect for some… Continue reading What is Calling?
As is mine. That’s how faith works. We all have hand-me-down faith. Sometimes I hear people talk as though faith that someone else gave you is somehow worse than faith that you found for yourself. I think that’s a mistake. I just had the privilege of watching eight baptisms and heard eight stories of people’s… Continue reading Your Faith is Secondhand
In the Old Testament, the Temple was a microcosm, a miniature copy of reality. We see this in the way it’s structured; it’s built as a copy of the Garden of Eden: a mountaintop land with trees. The Temple is on the apex of a mountain, it’s full of trees (the lampstands and the decorations),… Continue reading Church as Blueprint
When I write on modernity, I suspect I give off the ‘vibe’ that everything was better in some golden age in the past. At the very least I sound like something is profoundly wrong with the moment in which we find ourselves. This codes me as ‘conservative’ in the broadest way: conservatives are those who… Continue reading On Nostalgia
Character matters. I suspect everyone agrees on that much. We say when appointing pastors that character is the thing that matters most—whether we follow through on that is a good question, of course—and we say the same thing about what matters in the Christian life. It’s vitally important. Jesus wants us to grow up into… Continue reading Restor(y)ing Character
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