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Observations

Training for Mission

If we are to speak the Gospel into British culture we need to understand that culture. Like Paul in Acts 17, we need to observe what is going on around us and we need to speak into the issues that pre-occupy people. This isn’t dumbing down the gospel, it is actually far harder work than repeating the same message that we’ve always used. 

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Do Not Use

Bible and Mission Links 33

Reading OT prophecy, misunderstanding the mission movement, two ways to look at consumerism and some thoughts about change.

Categories
Observations

What’s So Great About The Past?

We can no longer expect to be listened to on the great cultural and moral issues of the day, simply because we are Christians. We have to earn the right to be heard through intelligent, gracious and prophetic engagement.

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Observations

What’s So Great About The Status Quo?

Western Europe is at the tail end of 200 years of encroaching secular materialism that has seen the greatest regression of Christianity since the rise of Islam. We are living in anything but a golden age.

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Observations

The Gospel as a Swiss Army Knife

People are more complex than we think they are, and the Christian message is much richer than we give it credit for.

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Mission

Worldliness and Church Growth

There are things that we can do and things that we cannot do with regard to church growth. and focusing simply on numerical church growth is precisely what we cannot do.

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Observations

Tennent Chapter 1: Megatrends

“I am convinced that if we are attentive to the refreshing winds of the Holy Spirit during this tumultuous and yet thrilling time, we will have a missiological rebirth where, side by side, with the global church, we will see a remarkable renewal of the church’s life and faith like we have not known.”

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Bible & Mission Reviews

Books I’ve Read: Not So Secret

IVP recently asked me to write a commendation for Graham Orr’s excellent new book Not so secret. I was more than happy to do so, and this is what I came up with. If you buy the book, you will discover that the publishers only used one fragment of a sentence from my carefully crafted prose […]

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Bible & Mission

There is Always One

One of the problems with being a blogger is that no matter how hard you work to write a post, there is always the possibility that someone will come along and write a funnier, more erudite, or just simply better on the same subject. If like me you blog on the Bible and mission, it […]

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Bible & Mission

Progress?

… as a community of expectation, the church must resist the temptation to view itself and its work as part of a progression, or process, rather than in terms of partial fulfilment and anticipation. In late modernity, this is more of a risk than ever, particularly as we grow further removed from the devastation of […]