word | spirit | world | church
I’ve argued elsewhere that the Sunday gathering is for worship, but as the priests gather in the Temple they find that the Lord comes to them. The occasion is worship, but we encounter God as he comes to us. As one of the four ‘events’ when God meets us as we worship him, Baptism is part of… Continue reading On Baptism
That’s the sort of sentence to bring in the clicks. Of course you want me to caveat that, surely I can’t mean all technology? On the face of it, obviously not. Does a pencil dehumanise us? It’s not clear how that would be a sensible thing to say, and your definition of technology has to… Continue reading Technology dehumanises us
In Acts 1 we read of the ascension of Jesus, up there among the five most earth-shattering events in human history, along with the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit. Immediately after the disciples trudge back down the mount of Olives, reversing the journey they took exactly six weeks before, arriving at the… Continue reading Structure Before Power
Embedding Habits III If part of recovering from our discipleship doldrums is to embed habits—and I think it is—then we will need to do something beyond thinking individually and thinking about the worship of the church. The church’s worship should be our starting point, and then the church should have a wider habitual life—as they… Continue reading Habitual Communities
Embedding Habits II The second way we can embed habits to help us in the discipleship crisis, is by what we do Sunday by Sunday in our church’s liturgy. I suspect most of my charismatic friends don’t want to admit that we have a liturgy, as that word is used to describe a different sort… Continue reading Liturgical Habits
Why is our faith shallow part I I’ve argued that we have a discipleship crisis, and outlined some of what I mean by that. I intend to take a few posts exploring why that might be. There are, I think, five causes: what our gathered worship is like, the loss of thick community, the loss… Continue reading Our Sundays are Shallow
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
As I write, Christianity Today have just published an article extolling the use of ChatGPT for Pastors in their preparation for preaching and Bible studies. It has gone viral for all of the wrong reasons. I am, as you’ll have picked up, committed to ‘cold takes’, so I’m naturally wary about deciding that you really… Continue reading Beginning to think about Generative AI
My last two thoughts for now on the Eucharismatic ‘manifesto’ that I sketched. Regularity and Form I’ve drawn a doctrine of the church that maps four encounters with God: Baptism, Lord’s Supper, Preaching, and Contributory Worship. It’s not wildly different from lots of Protestant versions, it’s essentially word and sacrament, with the charismatic addition being… Continue reading Two final Eucharismatic Words
It surprises many people I talk to, but it’s true that the more you do something the more you like it. Most of us assume that we keep things special by only doing them occasionally. There is a pleasure that comes from the occasional activity, but what we love we do. Our tastes are formed… Continue reading We Love What We Do
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