Categories
Observations Reviews

Surprised by Hope

For the last three or four years, I’ve been saying to anyone who cared to listen (and to some who didn’t) that the most important Christian book that I’ve read for ages is The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church by Frost and Hirsch. Shaping helped me rethink […]

Categories
Mission

The Changing Face of Mission

There is an extremely challenging piece on the future of mission to be found at Emerse: Accelerated travel accessibility and virtual communications technologies will change the definition of “missionary.” An inventory of insurmountable global challenges facing humanity along with rapidly evolving virtual technologies are certain to impact the future(now) church. The structure of our near-future […]

Categories
Do Not Use

Fishers of Men

From the Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus.

Categories
Christian Life

Doves or Snakes

This morning the three of us who are conducting a review of some Bible translation work in Togo meditated on one verse of Scripture together: Matthew 10:16. Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves. At the start of a week where we […]

Categories
Mission

Missional Reading of Scripture

Brian has some wonderful random thoughts on the missional reading of Scripture including this brilliant snippet. It is vital to learn to think “Christianly” But in today’s climate where the very claims of Christianity are not widely accepted or even understood, any approach to Scripture that merely increases the knowledge of “insiders” is in danger […]

Categories
Mission

Missional Matthew

Brian Russel has just started would should be an exciting and challenging series on Matthew. This should be well worth following as this excerpt from his introduction illustrates: The Gospel of Matthew reaches its zenith in Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples to Make Disciples. (Matt 28:18-20)  Notices that this is not merely a call for […]

Categories
Christian Life

Christ on Earth

I’ve been reflecting more on the theme of how Christmas seems, all too often, to morph seamlessly into Easter which I started here and which Phil picked up on his blog. It’s not that I have an problem with linking Christmas and Easter, Christ did come to save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21) […]

Categories
Bible Translation

God the Translator

Imagine for a moment that I only spoke Kouya and that I had something really important to say to you. How would I get my message across? Well assuming that gestures and an elaborate mime didn’t quite achieve the goal, I’d need to employ a translator. There are many theories about how translation works and […]

Categories
Mission

The Centrality of Mission

I’m generally allergic to articles on mission which are based on Matthew 28. It seems to me that we often concentrate on the few well know verses of The Great Commission and miss out the wider teaching of Scripture. However, I’m willing to make an exception in the case of this excellent article by Brian […]

Categories
Church: UK Mission Reviews

Time Magazine Profile: Rob Bell

Time Magazine has an interesting and sympathetic profile of Rob Bell, the presenter of the Nooma videos and author of the best Christian book I’ve read this year,