Categories
Mission

The Gospel and Culture: A Part of the Furniture

This is the third part of a series expanding on a short post about the contextualisation of the Gospel. You can find the original piece here. Christian communities very rapidly confuse their own cultural expression of Christianity with the Biblical pattern… In my earlier posts in this series, I started off with the image of […]

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Church: UK Church: World

The Gospel and Culture: The Gospel Makes Itself at Home

This is the second in a series of posts expanding my thoughts on contextualisation of the Gospel which you can find here. In the first post in this series, I suggested that the Gospel is Homeless, that is there is no such thing as a the definitive Christian language or culture. However, the opposite side […]

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Church: UK Observations

The Gospel and Culture

There is a fascinating blog discussion going on between Andrew Jones of Tall Skinny Kiwi and Phil Johnson of Pyromaniacs on the subject of the contextualisation of the Gospel. As is the case with Internet conversations the whole thing becomes a mishmash of links and comments and it’s hard to step into it half way […]

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Church: UK

The Future of Christianity Down Under

For Australia day, a number of erudite people have posted things about the future of the church in Australia – apparently this is a synchro-blog. I found Hamo’s post very well worth reading, if more than a little depressing. I know it may sound as though I lack faith, but I believe that what he […]

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Christian Life Church: UK

Christianity is Negative…

A while ago I wrote a post entitled religion is harmful. David Couchman has a review of a book called Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…and Why It Matters which picks up a similar theme and shows that young people in the US have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Church. I’m […]

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Church: UK

To Baldly Go

I don’t know why, but I find this article by Carl Trueman to be rather comforting. Yet baldness is nonetheless a great gift from the Lord, in that it imposes a certain dignity on the ageing process by cutting off the various less dignified options (e.g., ponytails, which shouldn’t be sported by anyone over 30; […]

Categories
Do Not Use

Christian versus Christ Follower

A few weeks back, I wrote that Christians in the UK might like to think more about presenting themselves as followers of Christ rather than as religious Christians. This theme is picked up in a series of wonderful videos by Bramsvan which are available on YouTube. The videos are a send up of computer adverts […]

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Church: UK Church: World

How They See Us

There is a very interesting article on ChurchRelevance about how young non-believers view evangelicals. The article comes from the US and reflects the situation there. The sad thing, is that I think it would make even harder reading if the survey had been conducted in the UK. Non-Christians aged 16-29 years old were asked, “What […]

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Church: UK Observations

Religion is Harmful

NEARLY half the British think that religion is harmful, according to a poll carried out by YouGov. Yet more than half also believe in God “or something”.The YouGov poll commissioned by John Humphrys, the broadcaster and writer, found that 42% of the 2,200 people taking part considered religion had a harmful effect. This report comes […]

Categories
Observations

Chastity Ring

British schoolgirl Lydia Playfoot has been banned from wearing her chastity ring in school; a story which has made most of the mainstream media over the last few days. (BBC story here.) I must admit that my thoughts on this story are a little bit mixed. I agree with Andrew that it seems a little […]