another excerpt from Erwin McManus 'an unSTOPPABLE force' - just buy it already! 'And though i'm advocating our need to become a movement, I would like to encourage you to give up on keeping up.' then a little later: 'The first-century church didn't keep up with its time, didn't spend its energy keeping up with its time. The first-century church changed time. It rewrote history. It radically impacted culture. The church was the forerunner, not [...]
that i am grappling with lately: one of them is taking the incredible life-transforming simple-gospel stuff we are reading about in books like Shane Claiborne's 'The Irresistible Revolution' and Erwin McManus 'an unSTOPPABLE force' and Rich Stearns 'The Hole in the Gospel' and even going back to the legen....dary Keith Green's 'No Compromise' story and not just being excited and 'challenged' and 'changed' by it, and not just talking about it and maybe looking down [...]
some more Erwin McManus from the book 'an unSTOPPABLE force' - From the chapter ‘Friction Traction’ On Multiculturalism: ‘The gospel, as presented in our time, has been crafted in such a way that would only bring Christians to Christ.’ ‘Evangelism for much of the church has not been among unbelievers but focused on receivers – people who already accepted our worldview.’ ‘The “great sociologist” Rodney King once said, “Can’t we all just get along?” The [...]
so i guess in some small part it was thankx to a stalkery type australian girl that me and tbV started thinking about what we eat and then started No-Meat-Thursdays which has actually been quite a rad extension of our lives and only occasionally interfered with 'normal' life - so every Thursday we don't eat meat just as a small small step in terms of meaning one-day-a-week's less meat needing to be there i guess [...]
'"We're looking for a church that meets our needs." It seems like I've heard this one a thousand times. The phenomenon of church shoppers has profoundly shaped the contemporary church. The entire conversation is not about relevance but convenience. The focus is not in serving the world; the church itself became the focal point. Our motto degenerated from "We are the church, here to serve a lost and broken world" to "What does the church [...]
so i have decided to try and be less judging of people this year - i think a couple of times this last year it hit me how judgemental i have become - i don't think i used to be that way but definitely an area i want to work on - i guess this last week nailed it home as i attended a funeral (my best mates mom in law) and a wedding (our [...]
"i believe Lord, help me overcome my unbelief." [Mark 9.24] a verse i am really drawn to in the Bible that falls nicely alongside my life themesong of 'there must be more than this' - the knowledge that God can do it, but will He choose to...? and the other day, altho it's not very CC (Christianly Correct) as i lay with my wife crying out in immense pain with the hugest of mammoth headaches [...]
i remember some kids song that went 'love your neighbour as you love yourself, oh-oh love your neighbour, but don't get caught' and thinking as i write that, i may very well have added the 'don't get caught' on to what was a nice kiddies song of which i still have the tune playing in my head... so maybe scrap that... but it brings to mind the one thing that is hugely on my mind [...]
I finished reading 'Mister God, this is Anna', on the weekend and REALLY enjoyed it a lot. Has a tendency to get a bit new age all-roads-leads-to-God in some of its murmurings but part from those there is some very solid God truth hidden amongst the pages and a jolly good read... Mister God, this is Anna – Fynn (pg 180) ‘Then she went on: “Why do we go to church, Fynn?” “To understand Mister [...]
arr, so last nite of crew before baptist summer camp 1 (1000ish young people) arrive and my friend Craig Fincham leads a devotion/crew-building moment and confesses some stuff to the team and God who has been loudly whispering (well i have been incessantly converting His calls to a whisper so as not to pay too much attention to them) to me decides this is a moment of truth (MOT) moment to SCREAM at me - [...]