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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
Christian Formation III If we’re formed by what we think, what we feel, and what we do—as I’ve argued we are—how does being formed by what we think work? You do actually need to learn the faith. We balk at this, for good reasons. Can knowledge of the Bible puff up rather than lead us… Continue reading You Need to Learn the Faith
Christian Formation II If we’re formed by what we think, what we feel, and what we do—as I’ve argued we are—how does being formed by what we do work? I think there are two components to this: community and habit. We become what we do. James K. A. Smith’s famous ‘pedagogy of desire’ argues that… Continue reading You Become What You Do, and Who You Do It With
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?
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
We contest not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities (Ephesians 6). This means the grand principles of the fallen world, ruled by evil personalities, and the everyday demons we all encounter all the time. Which might sound strange as maybe you don’t encounter many demons, but my pastoral experience would suggest otherwise.… Continue reading What is Spiritual Warfare
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
It was sat at a table in the University Starbucks that some of the things I’d read over the last few years about apologetics and Gen Z became real and urgent. I was having lunch with a student who had been around our church for a while. He had come along to my Life Group… Continue reading Repost: Useful and True
The church needs doctors, no not the kind you go and see if you’re unwell, the original kind. It is worth remembering that the medical profession stole the title of ‘doctor’—which literally means ‘teacher’—from the Universities and Churches. But that’s not the point I want to address, I’ve recently argued that the church needs to… Continue reading Doctors of the Church
It’s something of a truism that we’re formed by everything around us. It’s common for people to point out that in the average church you’ve got at best two hours of people’s time a week to use to form them towards Christ—you might get a third of them for another two hours midweek—and everything else… Continue reading The Need for Christian Formation
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