Quotable: Rachel Held Evans – Searching for Sunday
Rachel Held Evans 2015 book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church is well worth the read. As the sub title suggests, it is a book about loving, leaving and finding the church – and tells of a journey well worth pondering. Each chapter starts with a quote from a noteworthy figure, or a verse from the Bible. Here are a few of these quotes… I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out in the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security… More than by fear of...
Read MoreIn Praise of Smaller Churches: 10 Positives…
Almost every church I come into contact with (and over the years, that has been a fair few), wants to be bigger than it presently is. They look a little enviously at churches in the next size category, and imagine that if that were them, most of their problems would be solved. Their pastor (if they have one) assumes that if they were larger, they would be more respected by their colleagues and – well, let’s face it, we live in an era where bigger is usually assumed to be better. To be sure, large churches have many things going for them – and I certainly don’t want this post to...
Read MoreQuotable: Greg Sheridan, God is Good for You
Greg Sheridan’s latest book God is Good for You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times (2018) is well worth the read. It starts memorably… What will it mean for us, when God is dead? Who, then, can humanity converse with, when we lose our oldest friend? The loss of Christianity, and not only of Christianity but of much other religious belief and practice, will change us in ways we cannot possibly imagine. There will be no purpose beyond ourselves and ultimately Western humanity will look in the mirror and say: I’m bored with myself. And then, out of that boredom, who can imagine?...
Read MoreQuotable: Joshua Searle and Theology after Christendom – Take 2
I’ve changed the usual Monday format and instead of a series of quotes from a notable figure, I’m selecting some key passages and quotes from interesting books I am currently reading. This is a second look at Joshua T. Searle’s thought provoking and challenging work Theology After Christendom: Forming Prophets for a Post-Christian World (Cascade, 2018). Searle is a tutor in Theology and Public Thought at Spurgeon’s College, London, and I had the pleasure of meeting him and teaching in some of his classes during my recent stay at Spurgeon’s. …bad theology can be...
Read MoreWhy Pastors should (must) Pastor: Seven Musts…
It’s never been easy to be a pastor. Though it is often claimed that contemporary ministry is more difficult and complex than it has ever been, that usually signals that the claimant knows very little about previous periods of church history. For example, I am a Baptist pastor. Is it really more difficult to be a Baptist pastor today, than it was back in the 1600’s when the denomination was first founded? Hardly likely! Do you know what they did to so many Baptist pastors back then? Having said that, it is a challenging privilege to be a pastor – and both are true. It...
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