Women gained the right to vote in Australia just over a century ago, and since then, discrimination against women has been gradually removed and made illegal. Yet women still cannot be priests or preachers in many christian churches, making the church significantly our of step with our culture. And many christians are not entirely comfortable […]
Aussies wear T-shirts. We wear them at the beach, or around the house, or under a shirt when we go out. So we buy lots of them. And we like to pick up a bargain. And we’re not alone – T-shirts seem to be popular all over the world. So how much did your last […]
I have several times posted here and elsewhere about relationships between christians and atheists, and my wish that we do better at this, for example: Listening to atheists The way we treat deserters Atheists vs christians: does it have to be war? Is anybody listening? So when I saw a book in our local library […]
Dave Tomlinson is a British christian who has always pushed the envelope: a leader in the UK house church movement in the 1980s, founder of the Holy Joes “church” in a pub and author of The Post-Evangelical in the 1990s, and now Church of England vicar at St Lukes in London and author of How […]
The Bible occasionally talks of people hardening their hearts, or having hard hearts (e.g. Pharaoh in Exodus chapters 7 to 10). This concept is now common in the English language. Brain plasticity suggests it may be closer to literally true than we might have imagined.
I have written many times on this blog about problems I see with the way most churches operate. So it is a pleasure to be able to write about a community of christians who seem to be doing things ‘right’.
I am interested in effective communication, not as an end in itself, but because if we want to make disciples, we need to train and equip each other effectively. And for this, sermons just don’t cut it.
I have blogged about Rob Bell before (Hell and Rob Bell), but he hardly needs any introduction. After the President, he may be the person many conservative christians in the US most “love to hate”. I have been checking out a few of his videos lately …..
Another way in which Christianity is changing is the number of churches that are getting involved in their local communities, offering help and counselling services to those who need them and finding ways to make their community a better and more caring place. We can learn from three different churches in three different continents.
Last post I examined how Jesus said he came to establish the kingdom of God on earth, and that was good news for us. But how can this be good news for those who don’t believe? Aren’t they totally missing out?