It’s Not Your Fault: A Letter to Every Church Kid Haunted by Legalism and Lies
‘Friends… what if—just what if—He actually enjoys you? Not your Bible reading. Not your discipline. Not your church attendance or ministry output. You.’
What’s that giant “t” on your roof?
‘How far has the gospel imagination left our culture, that the very instrument of torture that Jesus died upon, and which was famously lampooned in the celebrated Alexamanos graffito, should be so devoid of meaning to a post-Christian? How little do the artefacts of Christianity bear any weight to modern young people that they should buy our most precious artefact because it was pretty to them. Or that, with no guile, they should ask why the lower-case letter “t” is placed upon a roof?’
Evangelism and the Cynic
This is a very helpful one. I, too, sometimes get that cringing feeling about some forms of evangelism. I don’t think it is always wrong; sometimes evangelism is done badly and isn’t very God-honouring. But even in those moments, we can still affirm God will do what he wants, save who he wants and use what he wants. That might include even this.
Doug Wilson and Christian Nationalism
This one provides highlights of Doug Wilson’s views and their links to Christian Nationalism. It is not exhaustive and it doesn’t delve into some of the more significant problems surrounding Wilson and his ministry, but it is a helpful overview of how his thinking influences Christian Nationalist thinking.
Nervous About Nuance
‘It’s possible to use nuance (or less charitably sophistry and casuistry) to support the position we want to be true. Most of us have done this in an argument (even if just with ourselves!) and we know it’s dangerous. As evangelicals who want to come under the Word of God, we need to be especially careful of this. We might be a little more sophisticated than the younger version of me choosing his preferred reading. In fact, one observation would be that the more theologically sophisticated we are, the more competent we are at finding a compelling route to self-justification.’
Understanding Your Muslim Neighbour
Our church is sited in an area that is over 90% South Asian Muslim. Our church functions bi-lingually because we have a significant number of Persian people with us. This one is especially interesting to us as it is written by an Iranian man speaking about engaging with Muslims more broadly. He offers some simple yet very helpful starting points.
From the archive: Three necessary shifts in our thinking on funding & resourcing
‘Money and people are the petrol and engine of ministry. Without money, it is very hard to go anywhere and without people no amount of money will get you moving by itself. Of course, if you have enough people who are able to support your ministry internally, you have the equivalent of a self-charging electric engine (just to stretch the analogy to breaking point). In many ways, that is what most churches want. They want enough people who can given financially to sustain the work of ministry as well as enough people to then use those resources in the work of ministry to maximise the church’s gospel output. In deprived communities like Oldham, however, both those resources are extremely hard to come by.’