Unbounded church articles
‘He is stolen and it is not harmless!’ _____________ I entered the large shopping complex and there He was, front, centre and large, enthroned in his palace. There He was, ‘the reason for the season’. The One who is always encouraging the children to come to him, and woe betide anyone who want to … Continue reading ‘The Stealing of Christmas’ Revisited
‘If you do not change you can become extinct’ - Haw ****** Most of us are familiar with the Ostrich, a large flightless bird that roams across wide tracts of the African Continent. Many are perhaps less familiar with the fact that zoologists now recognise the existence of two types of Ostrich. There … Continue reading The Melancholy Tale of Einstein’s Ostrich
‘Our very long investment in 'chapel' simply has not worked. The enormous resources that are put into clergy – training them and paying them. Our expensive buildings, the creativity lavished: frankly has not delivered quality Christian community or convincing disciples of Christ. Rather, in the West, what we’ve seen, what we’ve lived through is a … Continue reading Is God Crying?
“The United states, and the West, are caught in the slowly asphyxiating Grip of a decadence they do not understand, and have been there for fifty years . . . We are not standing on the cusp of decadence. The US, and Australia, have been decadent for half a century or more. The culture … Continue reading Descent into Dystopia -Reposted
‘It’s more missionaries we need, without more missionaries we will lose’ (A paraphrase of Air Chief Marshall Dowding’s comment on Pilots during the Battle of Britain) ****** I was having a coffee recently with a very successful businessman friend, also a committed Christian who has invested a great deal of his financial resources in his … Continue reading The Biggest Elephant – 4 – The Fatal Assumption
It comes as a great shock to many ‘church’ members that Jesus is recorded as using the word ‘church’ only twice and in neither case did he mean a physical building. Yet that is what legions of church members have been conditioned for centuries to mean when they use the word ‘church’, i.e. the building … Continue reading When is a ‘Church’ Not a ‘Church’?
“It’s more missionaries we need, without more missionaries we will lose” ****** In my previous post on the ‘Biggest Elephant’ topic I mentioned a number of characteristics of the Australian church (discussed more fully in the 'Something Completely Different' booklet) which are to various degrees causative factors in the Church’s chronic lack of missional … Continue reading The Biggest Elephant – Challenges Yes – Excuses No
“It’s more missionaries we need, without more missionaries we will lose” ****** In posts on this site over the last few years I have suggested a number of characteristics of the Australian church which are to various degrees causative factors in the Church’s chronic lack of missional fruit. They can be characterised as the … Continue reading The Biggest Elephant
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” W. Yeats ****** In recent times a number of friends have expressed their alarm at the current trajectory of society in general and in particular for the future of their children and grandchildren who are being, and will be, born into … Continue reading Nietzsche’s Chickens In the Land of the Unforgiven
Opportunity Lost As we see Covid19 restrictions beginning to be eased we also see the first trickles of what I am sure will turn into a flood of churches seeking to get back to ‘normal’, or business as usual’, as soon as possible. As this starts to occur, we see some churches going through a … Continue reading The Divine Freedom or An Opportunity Lost
