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Reviews

Books I Have Read: The New Testament’s Vision of Mission

Your mission committee, agency leadership team or board should read this book together. It is very good.

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Observations

Gathered and Scattered

If the gates of hell won’t stand against the church, it’s because the church is storming the gates, not the other way around.

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Observations

Why Did The Apostles Not Flee Jerusalem?

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.

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Observations

Accepting, Communicating or Dominating?

How language communities interact and some thoughts of what churches need to do.

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Observations

Life, the universe and … more glory

The word ‘life’ appears almost 280 times in a typical English translation of the New Testament. (I’m using the 2011 edition of the NIV 2011.) It’s such an important theme in the Bible, but what do we really understand by it? In John 10.10 Jesus says: I have come that they (the sheep) may have life, and have […]

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Observations

Are Mission Agencies Biblical?

Try as I might, I can’t discern any pattern to the missionary structures in Acts, nor to the way in which they relate to churches (beyond the fact that planting churches seems to have been the goal of apostolic missionary activity).

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Observations

Casting Lots and Vanishing Apostles

The fact that we don’t hear about Matthias is not the point. What is important is that a whole new set of characters, Paul, Timothy, Silas, Priscilla, Acquilla, Barnabas, Apollos and so on appear through the book of Acts and take the story forward.

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Observations

The Local Church and God’s World Wide Movement

Our traditional view of mission is part of the way in which the local church should engage with God’s work around the world, but it is not the whole story.

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Do Not Use

Throwback: The Ends of The Earth

Where are the ends of the earth? It all depends on where you start from!

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Observations

This Is Who We Are

From its outset the church has been ethnically diverse and this will be displayed in all its glory when people from every tribe, tongue and nation gather round the throne of the Lamb.