Categories
Observations

Not ‘Why?’ But ‘Where?’

If you happen to be wondering why I’ve not reviewed a book for a few weeks, it’s mainly because I am ploughing through The New Testament in its World by NT Wright and Michael Bird. At 900+ pages in hardback, it will take me a while to finish it. However, while it is literally a […]

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Do Not Use

Throwback: Tom Wright on the Resurrection

First-century Jews who followed would-be messiahs knew that if your leader got killed by the authorities, it meant you had backed the wrong man. You then had a choice: give up the revolution or get yourself a new leader. Going around saying that he’d been raised from the dead wasn’t an option.

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Do Not Use

Bible and Mission Links 41

Lots of thought provoking stuff for church leaders, missionaries, Bible translators and others.

Categories
Observations

Imagination Needed

Mission is a biblical universal, the modern missionary movement was a specific, culturally conditioned initiative which, while amazingly successful in its time, is likely to become increasingly dysfunctional if the attempt is made to preserve it as it is.

Categories
Observations

NT Wright On Bible Translation

“The question of translating scripture had already been faced when scribes, after the exile in Babylon, ‘interpreted’ the ancient Hebrew scriptures into Aramaic so the ordinary people could understand it. It was then faced even more directly by those who, somewhere between one and three hundred years before Jesus’ day, translated Israel’s scriptures from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek. Christianity was born into a world where biblical translation was already an established fact. There was little sense, as there is in the stricter forms of Islam, that the sacred language was the ‘real thing’ and that translation meant desecration.”

Categories
Christian Life

NT Wright on Worship

Are there biblical guidelines for worship? Is the fashion for rock-group-style worship a pure gift from God or a capitulation to the spirit of the age?

Categories
Quotes

The Place of Humanity in Creation

The point about human beings, in the original creation story to which Paul alludes again and again (specially in passages like 1 Corinthians 15), is that they are God’s agents, God’s appointed stewards over creation. This is what it means to be ‘in God’s image’: to reflect God’s wise, fruitful ordering into creation, and to […]

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Bible & Mission

The Big Picture: The New Testament and the Mission of God

I linked to the page hosting this video, yesterday, but having watched it, I think it deserves to be highlighted. Make yourself a coffee, then settle down and have your mind stretched for an hour. If you received this by email and the video does not show up, you can find it here.

Categories
Bible & Mission

A Missional Reading of Scripture

Last month I attended the Missional Reading of Scripture Conference at Calvin Seminary in the US. It was an excellent experience and I would encourage anyone interested in mission or the Bible or both to download the talks from the Calvin Website. I would particularly highlight the four plenary sessions. The four men giving these […]

Categories
Observations Reviews

Books of The Year

What with one thing and another, I’ve not read as many books as usual this year and I’ve reviewed even fewer. But for the record; here is a list of book reviews that have appeared on Kouyanet in 2012. The Future of the Global Church The Soul Survivor Youth Bible Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective […]