Is your church heading in the right direction?
09 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Church Tags: Change the church, christianity, churches, doctrine, Leadership, making disciples, mission
Churches have been going through a remarkable revolution this past 50 years. Denominational barriers are much lower and less important. The Holy Spirit is more welcome. Christians are much more open to new ideas. But there is much more to come (I believe)!
One of the very positive influences on world christianity is the ‘simple church’ movement, and Felicity Dale (a sometime commenter on this blog) and her website Simply Church blog is one face of this movement. I subscribe to her blog and gain a lot of insight from it. And one brief recent post summed a lot of things up for me.
Who’s afraid of Yahweh?
07 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in Doctrine Tags: apologetics, Atheism, Bible interpretation, christians, doctrine, ethics, God, Old Testament
It doesn’t take long before a thoughtful Bible reader comes across some rather odd and nasty things, especially in the Old Testament. And non-believers use the odd and nasty things as a weapon against christians: “How can you believe in a God who is genocidal?” they might say.
What are we to make of these things? Do they make it hard to maintain faith in Jesus? And how should we answer the critics?
Do we have a soul and is it immortal?
05 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Doctrine Tags: christianity, doctrine, New Testament, what is human?
A friend asked me about this the other day, and I had to research it, so I thought I would post what I learned.
The idea of an immortal soul which lives on after death is part of many people’s understanding of christianity. But it probably isn’t true.
Christians and Twitter
18 Dec 2011 2 Comments
in Behaviour Tags: behaviour, christians, mission, western society
I’ve never used Twitter. I’m not really interested, and I doubt anyone would want to read my tweets anyway. But many christians use it, especially well-known ones – writers, leaders, entertainers and bloggers.
But I’m beginning to wonder whether a lot of this christian tweeting is counter-productive.
Books: make your church a better place
10 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Church Tags: Books, Change the church, christianity, churches, Leadership, making disciples, western society
Over the years I’ve read a lot of books about changing the church. Probably out of desperation, I think. Things really must change, and they are, but too slowly. I’ve read a lot of good books in that time, and bypassed a few that didn’t look so good.
But here’s four books I can recommend wholeheartedly. If you read them and take notice, they can hardly fail to challenge you and lead to your church being at least a little more effective in carrying out the mission Jesus left for us.
Christian leadership
25 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in Church Tags: christianity, christians, churches, doctrine, Leadership, making disciples
Leadership is an important matter for christians. A fundamental aspect of being a christian is meeting with other believers in churches and other groupings. How these groups are led – that is, make decisions, form attitudes, gain knowledge and encourage each other – will have an enormous impact on our success in carrying out the mission entrusted to us.
What if we have got it badly wrong?
Barriers to belief: church abuse
22 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in Apologetics, Behaviour Tags: apologetics, behaviour, christianity, churches, ethics, mission
In Barriers to belief I reported that the biggest barrier to non-believers was the many much-publicised cases of sexual abuse within the church. How should christians respond to this?
My pleasure, their misery
21 Nov 2011 10 Comments
in Behaviour Tags: behaviour, Change the world, Chocolate, christianity, ethics, world
A short time ago, I posted on poverty and the growing world population (Christians and world poverty), and about the challenge of deciding how to respond (How much to save the world’s poor?).
Let’s start with something small which most of us can do this week, or this year.
Prayer is power sharing?
10 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Doctrine Tags: Books, christianity, christians, doctrine, prayer
I’m currently reading Knowing Christ Today by Dallas Willard, and I found this quote:
“Prayer is God’s arrangement for a safe power sharing with us in his intention to bless the world through us.”
I like this, because it touches on a number of important things.
Atheist vs christian internet wars
18 Oct 2011 2 Comments
in Behaviour Tags: apologetics, Atheism, behaviour, christians
The past six years, I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet, making comments on blogs and discussing on forums. The two most common subjects I’ve discussed have been web design and God. The people I’ve met discussing web design have almost always been friendly and helpful. I wish I could say the same about discussing God, religion and christianity!
I’ve made a lot of friends over that time, but I’ve also seen some ugly personal attacks, a mass of derogatory put-downs and a lot of polarisation. Modern day atheism can be a lot more militant and outspoken than it once was, no doubt partly in reaction to provocation, and I have sometimes been on the receiving end even though I try not to be provoking.
But the sad thing is, I see just as much bad behaviour from the christians.
Burned at the stake?
10 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Doctrine Tags: christianity, churches, doctrine, religion
The stories keep on appearing – there’s definitely something happening here.
This time it’s the story of a keen mission-minded christian who was condemned by the ‘doctrine police’ for questioning a few of the less important doctrines of some sections of the church. So he left the church, to serve God in other ways.
Read Jeremy’s story at Till He Comes.
Sunday services vs discipleship
08 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Church Tags: christianity, churches, making disciples, mission
If you thought I was exaggerating in yesterday’s post when I criticised church plants and said “a maintenance church may resist change that will further the mission”, you should read this story of a successful pastor who tried to ‘go missional’, in Stories from the Revolution.
Plant a mission, not a church
07 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in Church Tags: christianity, churches, Jesus, making disciples, mission
Jesus left us a big task (Matthew 28:19-20):
“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The church in most western countries is not doing all that well on this task these days. I have argued that we are approaching things the wrong way, and that our present way of doing church is probably providing comfort more than obeying Jesus’ command. And I have suggested some ways the church might change to do better.
In this post I want to look at some better ways.
The church and God’s plan
04 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in Church Tags: christianity, churches, Good news, making disciples, mission
I have discussed the decline in church attendance in western countries, asked why go to church? and looked at why sermons are a poor way of making disciples. So can we rescue the church from ineffectiveness and irrelevance? What might improve things?
Christians in society
28 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Behaviour Tags: behaviour, christianity, mission, religion, western society
A recent survey of American religion reveals some interesting facts
Robert Putnam (Harvard) and David Campbell (Notre Dame) undertook extensive research of religious attitudes in the US, and late last year published the results of their research in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve seen an outline of their findings and an interview with David Campbell.
Prayer and mission
21 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Behaviour Tags: christianity, christians, mission, prayer
Felicity Dale at Simply Church has posted some interesting accounts in Does prayer make a difference? Two groups of christians prayed for non-believers, with very striking results:
- A church in the US identified 160 homes, and prayed for 80 of them for 90 days. Then they approached all homes with the offer to visit and pray for them. Only one in the “not prayed for” group accepted the offer, but 69 out of 80 homes that were prayed for responded positively.
- Christians in India picked two villages and prayed for one. When they visited both villages they were thrown out of the village they didn’t pray for but made many converts in the village they did pray for.
I have a few difficulties about praying for one group and not another, though I guess they can at least rectify this following the experiment. And I certainly don’t think we can use these examples to “prove” that prayer works. (In fact, as you can see at Intercessory prayer and healing properly scientific studies of prayer show only moderately positive results.)
But I think we can see these accounts as a great encouragement to pray. We all believe in prayer and know we should pray more, but as TS Eliot said:
“Between the idea, and the reality ….. falls the shadow.”
Attracting people to church
11 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Church Tags: christianity, churches, making disciples, western society
If you attend a church, here is an interesting exercise. Think about your church’s regular services and its “outreach” activities. Do you try to make your services attractive to outsiders? Are the “outreach” activities held on church property? How many activities (whether evangelism or community service) are located in the community?
I want to suggest to you that your answers to these questions may give some clues as to why church attendances have generally fallen in recent years.
Why go to church anyway?
08 Sep 2011 5 Comments
in Church Tags: christianity, churches, New Testament
The church in the western world is losing numbers and influence. Should we christians be worried?
Is church as we know it important? And if so, why?
The future of the church
01 Sep 2011 4 Comments
in Church Tags: christianity, churches, God, western society
The church as an institution is losing ground in the western world. Most of us are pretty familiar with that. But what is its future? And what is the future of belief in God?
There are some interesting statistics on all this.
Does New Testament freedom lead to permissiveness?
13 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in Doctrine Tags: behaviour, christianity, ethics, religion
Earlier today, in God without religion?, I referenced a book which warns us that religion can lead to us getting “caught up in obeying Old Testament laws instead of experiencing New Testament freedom.”
In a comment, Julie suggested otherwise:
“The biggest problem with religion is that Christians can get caught up in experiencing New Testament freedom and fall into the heresy of antinomianism and ethical permissiveness.”
It’s a valid concern. But is she right?
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