The Bible vs. The Books
This one asks some questions about Christian books and Christian publishing that are well worth thinking about. Lots of good thoughts and applications in this one.
When to Put Salt in the Guest’s Shoes
‘In a culture that extends lavish offers of (often unsustainable) hospitality, there will always be people who, wittingly or unwittingly, take advantage of this. Finding kind and honorable ways out of this is therefore a top priority for all who attempt to extend these offers that most take hypothetically. Because some will take you literally. When that happens, you just might have to put some salt in their shoes.’
Glorifying God with Our Words
‘I cannot recount the number of insensitive, angry, spiteful, disgruntled, bitter, malicious, vile, vulgar, profane, blasphemous, deceitful, false, and hurtful words that I have said in my lifetime. I’m an excitable, expressive, and extroverted person who feels deeply about many things, and controlling my mouth is difficult for me. Perhaps you’re similar and feel my pain. Even if you’re introverted, you may feel my pain, because introverts can also have problems controlling their tongues.’
More than a Welcome: Why Calling Your Congregation to Worship Really Matters
I am one of those who probably does tend towards the simple, generic service opener. This one (I think) has convinced me that I should probably take a more formal call to worship seriously and to make sure our ‘cold open’ is significant. Read this one – it was especially helpful to me.
Can we still have Gospel partnership with Anglican churches (and what we actually mean by this)?
Dave Williams offers his thoughts on this one.
Baptist Denominations: A Guide to the Main Branches
This is a helpful overview of the various, main baptist denominations in America, Canada, Britain and Ireland. Michael Haykin briefly summarises each and their historical background. If you don’t know anything about baptist history, you may be surprised by the spread of denominations and their respective histories and theological predispositions.
From the archive: Messy Church
‘Those who follow this blog will know that we minister in a deprived mill town in the North of England. You can read the ‘about this blog’ page to find out more if you don’t know about this already. But the issue for us is not so much that the church is messy – whilst we don’t rejoice in the mess itself, we rejoice that mess is coming into a messy church to a saviour who loves messy people – it is more with the people who come and cannot cope with messiness. Jesus came into the mess of our world in order to save it and, whilst many claim they want to be Christlike, are often unwilling to do the very thing that our Lord did himself. Funnily enough, such people are often very messy themselves, it just shows in different ways to some of the other people they would point at and label ‘messy’. But I thought it might be helpful to lay out some of the specific ways that messiness might be a cause for rejoicing. Here are some ways messiness is not a sign of a spiritually unhealthy church, but one seeking after the Lord as they ought.’
The books v Bible issue resonates with me. Recently I received an email from a Christian publisher with the subject line: ‘How’s your prayer life?’ Needless to say in the body of the email I was offered a book which was going to help me out…. I was tempted… but then I reflected. Jesus has told us how to pray. He’s given us a template… and all in less than 60 words. If we could only learned to apply this well…
I thought that post was particularly helpful in parsing the difference between biblical principles and wise application. An awful lot of books seem to want to pass off as biblical, or necessary, what are just (potentially) legitimate applications of scripture. A lot of them would be helped by being a bit more honest – these things may be helpful, may be useful, but they are just an application.