sometimes i like to picture Jesus in a modern day setting and wonder how His life and ministry would have looked if it was 2011 when God decided to come to earth in human form to settle the original score instead of 2000ish years ago would He have watched movies or played computer games? Would He have had His own Facebook page or blog? Would Jesus own a cellphone (my thorts are He probably wouldn’t [...]
it is fascinating to see what gets christians all passionate and excited (in a pitchfork and flaming torches mob kind of way) - i remember the whole furore around the Christmas to X-mas campaign with stickers and articles and sermons declaring 'put the Christ back into X-mas' [it is only mildly funny that those people would campaign so strongly about that and yet for the most part be completely sucked into the capitalistic greed-focus of [...]
imagine this in badly drawn stick figures if you will: God and man (as in mankind/people) in harmonious relationship walking together in the garden, the place of creation, unified in relationship, God somehow receiving something from this engagement with His creation. something happens - man decides to choose self over obedience to God and relationship breaks down - we have the word 'sin' but really it is simply an indication of relationship gone wrong, breakdown [...]
so one of the things that came out of yesterday's discussions when we were looking at the christian faith existing in a pluralistic multi-faith society was the need to understand what we mean by church... one of the problems that the church faces today is that what we see as church is a combination of what church is meant to be about (according to God and the Bible) plus tradition and style and denomination and [...]
this week the third lausanne congress for world evangelication is happening in cape town - 4200 delegates from around the world representing church leaders, academics, theologians, marketplace people as well as men, women as well as old, young - convening for a week to discuss relevant issues facing the church - things like globalisation, pluralism, multi-faith society, relevance, integrity, response to poverty, trafficking etc etc - it is an incredible time and i am so [...]
'a theist believes in at least one god, but denies the existence of many gods' [the skeptic's dictionary] whereas an atheist denies the existence of god completely and 'at heist' is just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that's not important now... a theist and an atheist - so vastly different and yet the difference between them is nothing... or 'a space' to be more precise... [disclaimer: oh [...]
so it seems my last post caused some confusion amongst some people and no confusion amongst some other people [group hug] - my beautiful wife suggests it may have been my title saying one thing and the article saying another thing which i can see a little bit - on the one hand the title was meant to be a bit of an attention-grabber but on the other hand the title is a lot of [...]
so i was going to write a blog about confrontation and how there is a serious lack of it in the church i know this because i have been doing it for years and it has often felt like a very lonely, deserted spot to set out your picnic basket in a church congregation situation with the majority of people feeling the same thing, but everyone too afraid to speak up, or simply too lazy, [...]
how do we get it so wrong? pride. definitely. or maybe defiantly. definitively? what do they think of me? what don't they think of me? what should they think of me? what do i want them to think of me? i can't believe they... i can't believe she didn't... why doesn't anyone... don't they know that i... don't they see that i... it is loving God it is loving people selfishness. defiantly so. or deftly? [...]
so it seems like people continue to have an interest in the john ellis... um i'm not sure it's a saga, i think you need three movies for that, but new direction-taking-focus-ment? anyways i said to john, "hey john, people have questions" and john said to me "ask me those questions" so i said "Okay, but i just don't have them yet" and so this is where you come in... if you have a question [...]