Church
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Do you know what Eternal Life is?
This is another draft chapter from the book I’m working on… I’d appreciate any feedback. I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.Then the world will know that you sent meand have loved themeven as you have loved me.John 17:23 NIV Do you ever feel powerless? Do you ever feel like you don’t have what it takes? Jesus understood that his disciples simply would not have the capacity to glorify God, which is why he prayed what he did in John 17:23. His prayer points to another much-misunderstood aspect of Christian teaching: Eternal Life. My Father, Mal, often told the story of a…
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The cover-up that has robbed you of precious truth.
I have been gradually posting excerpts from the book I am working on about Jesus’ prayer for the church in John 17. In my last post on this (The wrong Gospel and wrong mission) I pointed out that Jesus seemed to believe the main thing the church needed to do in order to help the world believe in him was to love each other. In this draft chapter I unpack what Jesus said he gave us so that might be possible, and it leads to an exploration of what Eugene Peterson calls a “cover up” by Modern Christians of a central biblical truth. Here’s what I’ve got so far: So,…
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The WRONG Gospel and the WRONG Mission
Like it or not we have been deeply shaped by our cultural context and our cultural context is deeply shaped by consumerism and that consumerism has shaped even our approach to church and the gospel. We confused goals and outcomes. We heard Jesus’ heart that “the world may believe” through our consumerist lens and assumed he had given us a product to sell. We interpreted his great commission at the end of Matthew, to “go and make disciples of all nations,”[1] in the same way. This led to our understanding of mission as primarily the communication of ideas, as Donald McGavran put it: “an enterprise devoted to proclaiming the good…
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We will need a miracle
We have all had experiences of groups trying to be ‘one’. I like watching sport and I think part of the reason team sport is an important part of the human experience is that it gives structured opportunities for human beings to experience a taste the kind of oneness we crave. When a good basketball or football team is playing well it is almost magical. Players somehow intuitively know where each other are on the court or field and pass the ball, not to where their teammate is, but to where their teammate will be when the ball arrives. It is a beautiful thing to watch and can give a…
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A North Star from which to find our bearings
What is the Christian church meant to be? The answer isn’t as simple as you might think. Christians (mostly) agree that some parts of the New Testament are not directly relevant to us because they were written to a specific group of people in a particular cultural context. There are now very few churches that, based on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, forbid women from cutting their hair, men from having long hair, and direct women to only come to church if they are wearing a hat. Most churches don’t follow this biblical instruction because a woman with short or uncovered hair was as shameful as a man with long hair in…
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How do we build community online?
While we all look forward to the day we can meet in person once more, we will continue to explore what it means to build community in a digital world, because we must.
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There is a tidal wave coming… it is time to prepare
We are at the start of a long and complicated journey that the church could either be a great source of comfort and hope in, or else we could find ourselves as helpless bystanders.
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The Coronavirus Reformation
Matt is talking about how the Coronavirus is asking the church to reform in a matter of days to respond to the reality we now face.
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You don’t know it, but you need a Kingdom Cell.
You might not have heard of a Kingdom Cell and you may not think you are missing one. Let me explain how it will change the trajectory of your life.
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Have we forgotten the three questions of friendship?
It seems we have forgotten how to make and keep friends. New research indicates that one in four people feel lonely at least once a week. Apparently, experts are declaring that loneliness might well be our next public health epidemic. I am convinced that the reason this is happening is that we are losing our understanding of the nature of true friendship and also the art of relationship negotiation that is an essential part of any healthy friendship.
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You are not my enemy. You are my neighbour.
I have come to see that our church needs to be ready to relate to people at seven different levels:
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Our Appetites are leading us towards destruction.
Gun and Roses had it right. Our Appetites are leading us towards destruction.
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We need a new way to think about church
What should a church service actually be? That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with over the past few years. I am in the privileged position to be leading a church that is willing, and in fact want to, change. The challenge that sits in front of me every week is what kind of church we want to be. I know that when most people think or talk about “church” what they mean is a weekly gathering where there is some singing, some talking and maybe a bit of praying and reading. Up front, I know we must rediscover that what happens on Sunday (or whenever your service happens to be) is…
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We actually need a reformation of Christianity so our institutions better reflect the intention that was always meant to define them
As I write I am sitting aboard the Spirit of Tasmania II after a whirlwind visit to Victoria to celebrate my daughter’s 22nd birthday. We came across on Tuesday evening and spent much of Wednesday driving as we visited the Mornington Fusion centre where we had lived for five years before travelling up to Bendigo to be with Maddi. Seeing my little girl now all grown up and returning to Victoria, where I led the Fusion team for five years put me in a reflective mode, particularly in light of what I have been thinking about as I prepare for Sunday. There has been a lot written about the church…
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Don’t give up, but step up, into the wrestle for the future of the church
Today I shared some interesting findings about people who have left the church. The response I received indicates that the findings are right on the money. Josh Packard’s book Church refugees focussed on the significant number of people who are done with church, but not done with Jesus. Some of the key findings from the book were that: “The Dones” say they left because of the judgmental posture of church people individually and collectively which assaulted the communal experience they longed for. “The Dones” say they left because they are tired of trying to serve Jesus through the bureaucratic methods of church organizations which stifled progress and often gave little…