Categories
Mission

Mission in the 21st Century 4: Loving Service

This is the fourth in my (rather slow moving) series looking at the five marks of mission; inspired by Mission in the 21st Century edited by Cathy Ross and Andrew Walls. To Respond to Human Need by Loving Service Let’s start by grabbing a bit of attention: the Great Commission is not Biblical. Let me […]

Categories
Computing/Internet

Blog Day 2008

Today Is Blog Day 2008 and bloggers are being asked to nominate new blogs which they find interesing. I’m going to nominate blogs which are new to me; though they may not actually be new blogs as such. The first is the excellent blog by Ben Byerly about life as a theology student in Nairobi. […]

Categories
Do Not Use

Friends

About ten years ago, I was asked to serve on an interenational study group in our organisation that was looking at how to improve some aspects of our finance functions. At the time, I was extremely impressed with Doyle Peterson who chaired the comission; leading the disucssions and helping a disparate group reach conclusions. Since […]

Categories
Church: UK

Tribal Ministry for the Urban Jungle

John Drane is one of the most engaging thinkers I’ve ever come across on the subject of the church and culture. Third Way has an excellent, though rather long, piece by Drane on the tribal nature of modern urban life in the West and how the church should respond to it. In the 1989 movie […]

Categories
Politics

Political Bias

In most countries in the West, political opinion tends to be strongly divided between two or more politcal parties.  People who are in favour of one party will often heap huge amounts of opprobium on the heads of their opponants and refuse to believe that any good can come from them. Just look at the […]

Categories
Mission

Storms Can Produce the Best Waves

After getting soaked by tropical storm Fay last week, it’s good to see Brian Russell drawing some good missional lessons from it – as well as getting in some good surfing. As missional leaders, we have been called to engage the cultures of the world with the Gospel. Such engagement always carries an element of […]

Categories
Bible Translation

More on the New Living Translation

David Couchman has just posted an interesting article on his reasons for using the NLT: People get incredibly heated about which Bible translation to use. I’ve met people who honestly seem to be more concerned about this than they are about the doctrine of the atonement. I’ve come across people in church who (I think) […]

Categories
Observations

A Morning in the Hills

After a few days in Florida being well watered by Tropical Storm Fey, it was very nice to come up to the frozen north and to have lovely weather. I’m in Calgary to visit the Wycliffe Canada offices and staying with my friend Doyle Peterson and his family. After working with Doyle all over the […]

Categories
Church: UK

Leaving the Church for Wicca

There is a startling report in the Telegraph which claims that 50,000 women a year are leaving the church and taking up pagan religions. Apparently, this is partly inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer! The old-fashioned attitudes and hierarchies of churches are causing a steep decline in the number of female worshippers, according to an […]

Categories
Mission

Dave Burke on Postmodernism

My mate Dave Burke of Bethany City Church in Sunderland has just posted on his website some talks that he gave at Keswick this year. One of them is an excellent piece on post-modernism that I strongly recommend to you. One of my gripes about much Christian critique of post-modernism is that the often do […]