The contention of the ‘Why men hate going to church’ movement is that church has become feminised. From David Murrow’s website: With the dawning of the industrial revolution, large numbers of men sought work in mines, mills and factories, far from home and familiar parish. Women stayed behind, and began […]
As I blogged here, there’s a range of church experiences in Tanzania. One exercise we did in our intercultural training was to observe without moving to evaluation or explanation. It’s a practice I’ve continued. Here’s some of what I’ve noticed about our church.
Let me paint two pictures of Tanzanian church services. The first is a Good Friday service. It’s long and the ministers are dressed up in their robes. It’s an Anglican service. And there’s something familiar about the way the congregation responds: the mumbled words after the Bible reading, the faces […]
Today we were introduced to vocab around marriage. In Swahili, there are different words for ‘to marry’ depending on whether you’re talking about a man or a woman. To simplify, you talk about a man being married in the active voice – he marries someone – but about a woman […]
Tamie and I work with CMS Australia, a network of people who care about crossing cultures with the message of Jesus. Worldwide, CMS is one of the oldest world mission groups — for other groups in the CMS family, check out NZCMS, CMS Ireland, CMS UK and Crosslinks. CMS Australia recently launched a […]
In 2010 we hosted a debate for our theological college: Will the real Mars Hill please stand up? The debate invited the audience to compare and contrast two well-known American megachurches and the leaders behind them, Rob Bell and Mark Driscoll, whom we saw as representing powerful and differing forces […]
You might know the quote attributed to Francis of Assisi: Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary. You might also have heard that he didn’t exactly said that. The quote comes up for discussion because sometimes we’re concerned that words, and gospel preaching, might be downplayed. But […]
Meet Jesus at uni 