History isn’t something that happened ‘then’, it’s something we live in ‘now’. One of the remarkable things about the Bible is that it claims to be a story which includes all of human history. It isn’t simply a book of stories about the past, it is a narrative which starts with the creation of the […]
The Future of the Global Church, the latest book by Patrick Johnstone is well worth getting hold of. As you can see from the picture above, it is full of maps, pictures and graphs and is a delight to browse through. I don’t suppose that anyone will actually read through this book from cover to […]
Let’s get one thing straight: just because people have been repeating an argument for 2,000 years or more doesn’t mean that they are right. It could simply mean that they haven’t learned by their mistakes. For example, speaking about the Jamaican Patois Bible Project, Bishop Alvin Bailey, of the Portmore Holiness Church of God near […]
As many people have noted, this year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. A great deal has been written and said about the impact of the KJV on the language and culture of the English speaking world, but no one has come close to describing the impact of the […]
Following on from my last post, here is a longish quotation from Andrew Walls. The missionary movement is now in its old age. It is not a useless and decrepit old age. There are situations where it provides the most effective, perhaps the only foreseeable means of making any witness to Christ or any proclamation […]
This is the first of what is planned to be a three part mini-series. Before any of my colleagues get upset, I do believe that the West should continue to send out missionaries to the rest of the world, but asking hard questions is a good way of making us face up to some issues […]
How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind is a bit of a mixed bag. It is partly a demonstration of the pivotal role that Africa played in the early history of the church, partly a plea for scholars (especially African ones) to do fundamental research into early African Christian literature and archeology and partly a lament […]
Disclaimer: The nice people at IVP Academic provided me with a review copy of this book. Continuing the trawl through my holiday reading we come to Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings by James R. Payton Jr. The highlights are that I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone with an […]
2159 AD: A History of Christianity by Craig Borlase is a fascinating little book. It is a church history which purports to be written in the year 2159 (hence the title) and which covers the next 150 years of history as well as the last 2,000. It is witty, well written and fun to read […]
In AD 70, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the population. The centre of the young Christian church was caught in the crossfire; the leadership scattered and the mother church was no more… So, within a few decades of its birth, the Christian church no longer has its centre of authority. You might have expected […]