word | spirit | world | church
I’m a charismatic, and an occasionally whacky one. It’s not uncommon for people in my circles to highlight the importance of a 'spiritual realm' to how we understand the world. That’s where it can start to go off the rails. There are many mad things said under that heading, but it’s having a resurgence in… Continue reading Seen and Unseen
In evangelical theological thinking we tend to use the category of whether or not something is ‘allowed’ a lot. Our disposition is that if it is not disallowed, then it’s allowed, and we can pragmatically decide whether that might work for us. You see this on display especially in relation to questions of ecclesiology: how… Continue reading Is it Fitting?
Stretching Minds I When exploring Matthew Lee Anderson’s book Called into Questions—which I blogged my way through earlier in the year—I kept returning to this theme that the church should be a community of enquiry. Essentially, churches should be places where it’s both safe to ask the actual questions that you have and where you’re… Continue reading A Community of Enquiry
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
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