Mission from the majority world
Mission is not a Western business! This post opens up some of the headshifts that we need to make (as I suggested last post). It’s based on an ‘Issues in Missiology’ class; the material is largely from David Williams.
The feminine in music
Her.meneutics ran a piece today on the absence of women from the contemporary Christian music scene in the US – none in the top 10 Christian songs and artists and only 2 in the top 50. I’d be interested in getting an Australia perspective on this. I don’t really listen […]
Christian confession
I’ve been wondering for a while now about how to do confession in a church service. This has been prompted by Ridley chapel, where they often use the Anglican prayer book. I think in all three Communion orders, confession comes in preparation for receiving communion and I’ve wondered how helpful […]
Ancient Future: Pros and Cons
The Ancient Future movement is all about taking inspiration from the past and translating it into now, moving forward to the future. It’s associated with (post)postmodernism and Gen Y and manifests itself in everything from fashion to art to worship.
Send your youth group on a cruise
I got chatting last week with a visitor to Ridley who used to be the pastor of a big church in Sydney’s north. He was extolling the virtues of the youth pastor who’d worked under him and that youth pastor’s approach to growing and contextualising his ministry. I haven’t been […]
How did the early church grow? Part 1
These two posts cover 10 factors behind the remarkable growth of the Christian church in its first 500 years and beyond. (Part 2 is here.) Each factor has important implications for how we think about mission and the church today. It’s part history and part sociology, and the material comes […]
Adelaide Christian Scene
One of the things we’ve been struck by since moving to Melbourne is the distinctives of our home town, Adelaide. Lots of people know Adelaide as the City of Churches. It’s not that Adelaide had an especially high number of church buildings, but Adelaide was the first place in Australia […]
Meet Jesus at uni 