First of all, I know I’m a day late actually typing this up and publishing, but it’s what I was thinking about and is worth writing. I don’t really know if anyone realised when planning the series that the passage preached on at Canley Community Church would be so perfect for Holocaust Memorial day – […]
Maybe it’s a natural result of being a part of a conservative, even ‘fundamentalist’ group. Maybe it’s a result of the ‘culture wars’ – even ‘across the pond’ here in the UK, the language and attitudes are contagious. Whatever the reason, when I hear that something is ‘counter-cultural’, there’s a part of me that wants […]
Evangelism has become a dirty word to some people and cultural changes are happening across the world, ones that I would normally label as ‘postmodern’, which raise new problems with how we share the Christian message. It’s these issues that Doug Pagitt tackles in his new book Evangelism in the Inventive Age. ‘Inventive Age’ is what […]
I have to be honest and say that Exegesis of Mark’s Gospel was one of my favourite modules of the year. While this was at least partly down to the content – Mark’s gospel is probably my favourite book of the bible – it’s also partly to do with the teaching method of Conrad Gempf. He […]
Reading ‘The King Jesus Gospel‘ by Scot McKnight had moments of that bizarre experience of someone thinking your thoughts after you, then having the analytic insight to go deeper and find answers that are intuitively right but you hadn’t reached. Though I posted a quote on the subject of ‘what is the gospel‘ just a […]
Guilt, Shame and Conviction Guilt and shame are widely acknowledged to be negative, unhelpful emotions. Guilt is more inward-focussed – how bad I feel about that thing I did or didn’t do. Shame has a more outward direction, but is still internalised – how bad I feel about how they might feel about what I […]
Unless you understand that Jesus invites us through faith in him… to actually live in the Kingdom of God now, there will not be a basis for discipleship and transformation. Dallas Willard, http://www.outofur.com/archives/2011/05/ur_video_dallas.html As the conversation goes on to say, faith in Jesus is not about a new life after death, but death in our life […]