God is astonishingly, remarkably, overwhelmingly kind. He justified the wicked (Romans 4) because he is so kind. He shows immense common grace to non-Christians. For love to be non-existent between Christians (and with non-Christians), regardless of disagreements, demonstrates a serious disconnect with what God is like.
Read moreBusyness and Mission
the temptation is to organise our lives to accomplish seeing and experiencing as many things as possible. Or to organise it so as to maximise my potential, self-worth or ambitions. I know that temptation. Its a packed world, so many places to see and things to do. Ross' comment is that people who live like this never commit long term large portions of their life to any one thing for fear of missing out on something else. Therefore the cause of world missions is greatly damaged because there are so many places in the world where it is only possible to have an impact for Jesus by long term (sometimes life long) loving and relating well to people.
Read moreGod is Love
How do we love our enemies? Because there are certainly an increasing number of people who have decided that they want to paint us as immoral, intolerant, offensive and unworthy of being allowed to contribute in the public square
Read moreFunny White Man
The lesson I really learnt from my sisters was how foolish it is to confuse the content of worship (or worse still the aim of worship) with the musical and cultural form worship takes. This instantly leads us to assume that proper worship is done the way I am familiar with. Worse, that anything musically or culturally different is instantly suspect. If we are not used to dealing with difference it is so easy to instantly assume that the culturally alien is immaturity.
Read moreImpacting the Neighbourhood
A few musing questions for a Monday morning, about how people round about us see us. Do the neighbours to our church premises:
- Think we care about what goes on in the community? ie are we interested in what they are interested in, or are we only interested in them for the sake of winning them for Christ?
- Are we interested in doing them good, just for the sake of doing them good, a la Galatians 6:1?
- Are we being a blessing to the locale?
These are questions about how what we do is perceived. Are we perceived to care? Or are we perceived to be isolated in our services and rather divorced from the surrounding society.
If you asked the people living right next door to where you meet: what do you know about what goes on in here; what do you think of us; do you have a positive experience of us being your neighbours; do you see anything here that would make you interested to find out more; are we a blessing to you; what would they say?