Articles specific to the unbounded church concept
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!
The phenomenon of the ‘Embarrassed-Christian’ syndrome, is in line with recent congregational surveys that show that when asked to select from a list of 14 priorities that they thought their congregation should invest in, ’starting a new missional venture’ came in a dismal 13th, or 2 percent of those surveyed.
Recently a colleague in the United Kingdom contacted me because he had heard about my recently published book ‘Quantum Mission’. His name is Ben Taylor someone I have known for several years and worked with on a number of conferences and seminars in the UK. He oversees a disciple-making movement with the name of Mission … Continue reading Quantum Mission – An Interview
Unpalatable though it may be, and much as many seem to wish to ignore or deny it, the current local church paradigm in the West has not been for several decades, is not, nor can be made to be capable of achieving urgently needed trend-reversing missional goals
‘They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Communist; They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist; They came for the labour leaders, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a labour leader; They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Jew; Then they came for me –And there was no one left to object.’
‘In the birth of a child, there is a new dawn with endless potential’ *** The first colour movie I ever saw was put on as a special showing by my primary school in class time. It was of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second, and so her reign has pretty much … Continue reading Queen
