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 … Continue reading God Is Weeping
Prayer is, or should be, an everyday practice for Christians. It is our communication channel with God as well as being one of the essential disciplines for spiritual growth and health. The Bible exhorts us to pray “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), but that always raises the question of how does God answer prayer? One … Continue reading Mission Failure and God’s No
I turn on the radio and tune in to a news channel, then another and another, but all of them, the TV channels too, are covering the same story- ANZAC Day, 25th April. This is the Australian and New Zealand equivalent of what in the United Kingdom is ‘Remembrance Day’ on November the 11th. It … Continue reading Winning The War But Losing the Peace
It is important that when we establish any type of new missional community it must be one that can be easily reproducible, in fact as we set it up we must be thinking about the next one.
We live in a momentous time in western society, indeed a time such has never before been in human history, a time that can truly be described as unique. The characteristic that marks its uniqueness is rapid and constant ‘Change’. It is a time in which we are seeing the slow motion collapse of western … Continue reading Mission In Changing Times
Very near to the place I grew up in there is a hill which has the name of Barr Beacon, which means in Old English ‘a hill used for lighting fires’. Such Beacons existed on a chain of hills across the United Kingdom each in ‘line of sight’ of the ones next in the chain. … Continue reading ‘The Times They Are A Changing’ and Again and Again and Again . . . .
A year or so ago I visited my great grandmother’s church. A very old stone building set in a stonewalled, grave-filled enclosure in an English hayfield. Weather-faded headstones spoke of centuries of ‘saints’ that had walked this place. But it was on the inside, in the cold, small space of worship that the ‘overwhelming’ happened. … Continue reading The Kingdom and the Darkness
Phew! It’s finished, all that planning, all that effort, the multitude of resource-draining Christmas ‘outreach’ activities (with exhortations to invite a friend), Carol Services (with exhortations to invite a friend), Gingerbread Houses (with exhortations to invite a friend), Beach Missions (with exhortations to come along to help). Thank goodness, it’s now time to have a … Continue reading Tis the Season for Axes and Bullets
It was hard to believe but there it was on the news. A new and previously unknown civilization had been found in the depths of the South American jungle. The people who discovered it named it ‘Morphtopia’. On hearing about this new people group mission organisations decided to make it a priority to send missionaries. … Continue reading The Morphtopian Odyssey
The Cunard ship the Queen Mary was a floating palace when it started to carry the exceedingly rich across the north Atlantic before the second world war. It was fitted out in the most opulent and sumptuous manner, with the finest materials that money could buy, with staterooms that were fit for a King. Then … Continue reading Don’t Mention the War!
