I’m not one of those who’d say that I find prayer particularly difficult. God was very real to me from the beginning of my Christian faith and it always felt natural to develop a relationship through prayer. I remember in those months of searching before becoming Christian of uttering some very real prayers and having … More Shaped Prayer
I remember Dr Rory McKenzie saying in a Practical Theology class, back in 1998 at bible college, that ‘the unreflective life is not worth living’ and I have remembered that like a bolt of lightening these last ten or so years since I heard the words coming from his mouth. This, in many ways, is … More Taking Shape
For those of you who might want to ‘brush up’ on the thinking that accompanies how we might respond as a church after Christendom, Stuart Murray has a book called ‘Church Afer Christendom’ and one called ‘Post-Christendom’. They are weighty books, although very good. There are also others in the ‘After Christendom’ series. However, if … More After Christendom Summary
Now, I’ve gotten into trouble writing about this before (not that its going to stop me reiterating what is, I believe, a fundamental Christian truth). The fact is this: the Kingdom of God is a classless race of people. The divide between clergy and laity is a Christendom creation. Laity, and indeed ‘clergy’ , is … More Classless
Frank Viola in his book ‘Reimagining Church’ highlights that there were four different types of meetings evidenced in the pages of the NT. They were: Apostolic Meetings Evangelistic Meetings Decision-making Meetings Church Meetings Apostolic meetings were those where the apostles would ‘preach’ to an interactive audience. ‘Preaching’ was rarely monologius, mainly interactive. The aim of … More Types of Early Church meetings
I found this good article (below) which presents the model of ‘open participatory meetings’ very well in a condensed version. Enjoy reading. I will do a midrash on it, adding my comments on it over the next week or so. Additionally, you might want to look at the follow up to ‘Pagan Christianty’ by Frank … More Participatory Church Meeting
Before resigning as a Salvation Army officer, I wrote a series of articles which were my reflections on leadership. If you read my previous blog, you may remember it. If not, you can read it here as it was published in this SA journal. It was a culmination of years of ‘working out’ the deep … More My shock
Every church, in essence, wants to do things ‘by the book’ (meaning the Bible). Yet, it is surprising that many of the ‘sacred cows’ we have in the church have little foundation in the New Testament at all. Here is a list (with help from Frank Viola and George Barna) of some of the post-biblical, … More Doing it by the Book?
Is Christianity merely an intellectual agreement with a set of propositional truths? Is it merely a warm tingly feeling and the presence of comfort and peace? is it building one’s life and diary around the activity of the church? Of course not. Having said that, I recently heard a man who had been representing … More Christianity Lite
As I already mentioned (was it here or facebook?), last Sunday 17th October was the 15 year anniversary of my conversion. Let me tell you a story…. Faith, God, church was never really a part of our upbringing and to be fair it wasn’t really a part of my parents upbringing either. My mum and … More The beginning
Andrew S M Clark 