A second and third Reformation…
Just over a decade ago Rick Warren called for a second Reformation. Making a stirring plea at both the Baptist World Alliance Conference and the Willowcreek Leadership Summit, he suggested that whereas the first Reformation was of doctrine, the second needs to be a Reformation of deeds. It was challenging stuff, and a decade later we can see its prophetic power. As we approach the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Reformation (usually dated as 1517), it seems appropriate to join the growing tide of conversations about needed reformations. Not that Warren’s plea was really heeded...
Read MoreWhat does a healthy church look like?
We’ve had a few posts on churchless faith and the journey towards becoming de-churched. Underneath has been the assumption that the church has in some way disappointed and failed to be what she should be. And in most cases if you ask those who have given up on the church ‘why?’ they would cite a litany of errors and flaws. Perhaps we should ask what it would take for people to give an approving nod, and to say, ‘well if church is like that, count me in’. Or to put it differently, what does a healthy church look like? I’ll list a dozen signs that I think indicate health, but would be...
Read MoreI’m part of a church because…
We started this short series on the church by looking at the growing phenomena of churchless faith, where people who still hold to the Christian faith choose to continue in the faith whilst not being actively involved in any Christian church. In spite of the growth of churchless faith, overall church attendances are not faring too badly. The haemorrhaging of church membership in the so called Western world appears to have past the peak it reached in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and while still worrying, might be levelling. So let’s balance the post on churchless faith by...
Read MoreChurch: A messy, risky but still powerful ideal (Part 2 of So what is church?)
Part 1 of this post set about answering the question, ‘So what is church?’ suggesting that church is a simple, but powerful idea. It did so in response to the earlier post on churchless faith – a growing phenomena that often sees people, in spite of their faith commitment, simply shrug and say, ‘Church – too difficult, too painful, too boring, too political, too time consuming, too compromised, too controlling, too irrelevant’ – or something comparable. They then quietly (or not so quietly) withdraw from active involvement from any local church. As...
Read MoreSo what is church? Part 1 Church, a simple but powerful idea…
We kicked off this short series on the church by looking at the relatively new but rapidly growing phenomena of churchless faith. I wanted to start with that post because the word church increasingly has a lot of emotional baggage attached to it. For many it smacks of control, abuse of power, manipulation, politics and thought control – a rather alarming set of associations. For others it conjures up images of boring Sundays, or of irrelevance or perhaps of sectarian squabbling. Much more positively, for large numbers the images are of spiritual growth, close community, God encounters,...
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