word | spirit | world | church
Are we supposed to judge others, or not? D. A. Carson has quipped, and is often quoted, that John 3.16 is no longer the best known verse of the Bible in western cultures. Instead, it’s Matthew 7.1: ‘judge not, that you not be judged.’ Which tells you a fair bit about our culture’s reception of… Continue reading On Judging Others
If you want to mature, you’re going to have to suffer. Actually, that’s not quite right. You are going to suffer, that’s the nature of life under the sun. Some of that will be petty, some of it will be serious, and (heaven-forfend) some of it will be so psychologically scarring that you’ll be getting… Continue reading Maturity requires suffering
Pastors hate being told that don’t have a real job—the old joke being that you only have to work one day a week. The thing is, it’s more true than you think. I’ve been an elder in a couple of churches for around ten years now. Which makes me pretty green in the pastoral stakes,… Continue reading Pastor, you don’t have a job
Over the last few months I've been writing about some of the challenges facing the British church around issues of theological development. We lack a defined an coherent 'mind,' especially in the charismatic churches. I outlined our need for institutions, our challenges with reading the Bible, and how 'Doctors' will be a portion of the… Continue reading It’s Time to Build Counter-Institutions
Neil Postman argued that our metaphors demonstrate our thought patterns. I’ve argued that our metaphors fence our thought patterns such that we can’t think outside of them. I suspect the relationship here flows in both directions rather than simply downstream, but metaphor and thought connect in important ways. When we use machine language to describe… Continue reading Efficiency in Churches
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
Leadership is a useless concept and we should stop talking about it. Ok, so that was a confirmed clickbait opener. I don’t really think that. I’ve designed and run award-winning worldwide leadership programmes for a household brand. I don’t think that was pointless. I’ve run leadership development programmes for a church too. I don’t think… Continue reading Against Leadership
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