Our, now decades long, failure in meeting Jesus’ mandate to ‘make disciples’, will not be reversed until Christians and churches don’t just claim to be ‘bible believing’ but cease their use of the SBV, re-insert the word ALL into the Missionary Verse, and act on it.
‘We had rain the other day, real rain, weighty drops falling as tears from heaven. In the rain a picture of God weeping formed. For surely, He must be, weeping that is over this not sun-baked but sin-baked, spiritually dried out land, this erstwhile gospel-shaped country that has been given all the promises of God in the message of Jesus.’
‘Our shared morality, once the glue that held the social fabric together, is being torn apart’. Paul Kelly - 2nd March 2024․ *** Around a year ago I wrote this regarding our times; tragically it is even more relevant twelve months later – ‘In the West, we have arrived at Easter 2023 as a … Continue reading When the ‘Church’ Has Lost Its Way
While it should be remembered that no-one can be argued into the Kingdom of God, Christians need to be equipped to be able to say something about what is actually a quite limited number of issues that both Christians and non-Christian's wrestle with. ‘Barriers to Faith’ is intended to be some help when Christians need to respond to some of the main questions/challenges they may encounter in conversation with others.
The start of a new year is traditionally a time to reflect on the year ahead. To ask the question, what picture will we paint on this blank canvas of time that God has given us in the year of 2024? How does God want us to use the resources (paints) that he has given … Continue reading The ‘Good Thing’ or the ‘God Thing’ – That is the Question?
As we embrace the new year of 2024, we are reminded of the timeless wisdom in the poem "The Gate of the Year" by Minnie Louise Haskins. Just as King George VI sought solace in its words during troubled times, we too can find hope and guidance by placing our trust in God as we navigate the uncertainties ahead.
We live in rapidly changing times. A characteristic of this is western society's rejection of its moral operating system i.e. Biblical Christianity. This has allowed the return of what those who fought against Hitler's Nazis in WW2 thought they had defeated in western countries. i.e. antisemitism. Tragically this seems not to be the case.
For a quarter of a century at least, survey after survey, data release after data release, census after census, have shouted out the developing crisis in terms of the Church’s dismal missional effectiveness. Yet with a deafness (deliberate or otherwise) to the few voices calling out the nakedness of the missional Emperor, and a blindness to the reality of an ever-rotating kaleidoscope of cultural tribes undergoing tectonic change, we have continued along the same now decades-long road, strewn with ‘Square Wheel’ missional failures.
Even in the face of the well-documented chronic, decades long, serious decline of Christianity in Australia (the West) the experience has been that only a miniscule number of church members will take up opportunities for 'coal face'. local mission.
Although not all, the vast majority of western Christians today have the cemented-in mindset that ‘church’ is largely what happens in certain, mostly bespoke, buildings, generally on Sundays. Further, the main Christian activity of most (when measured by time) is something called ‘going to church’, again generally on Sunday. This is because centuries of living … Continue reading The Future Lies in Going Back to It!
