Growing through Christian history

Pastoral Ministry, Thought, Sola Panel

One of the quotes that stayed with me from last year said this about historians:

“Without them, our civic life would be a wasteland of forgetfulness, a cultural desert.” [Source]

I think the same is true of our church life. As Christians we need to know something of our history. The basic deposit of our faith is the gospel of Jesus, in the whole inspired counsel of God in the Scriptures. (more…)

Slavery and the Old Testament law

Thought

There is a scene in The West Wing where President Jed Bartlett fires off round after round of ridicule as he pretends to apply Old Testament laws to his life. Should he put to death his staffer for working on the Sabbath, or get the police to take over? Should footballers wear gloves to avoid touching the pigskin ball? What price could he get if he sold his daughter as a slave? (more…)

Life in a dark place: Doubt in the Christian life

Life

At the start of 2013, at a conference in Christchurch in New Zealand, I saw something simple but profound: the power of talking about things. There were a number of interviews where people spoke frankly about some difficult issues they had lived with, or were living with, as Christians. (more…)

Work, value, and the gospel

Thought

As we come to this third article in our series on work, we need to remember again the question that we’re seeking to answer: what place does our work have as we seek to follow Jesus in God’s world? What I have been arguing up until this point is that this question is actually not quite right. A better question, in light of the gospel, is “What works should we do as followers of Jesus in God’s world?” (more…)

Don’t teach the Bible

A simple test of a good teacher is to ask what they teach. If their answer is Maths, English, Science, History or Geography, they probably don’t understand their role. If they say students, pupils, young people, or adults, there is a possibility that they know their trade. Of course, such a simple test is simplistic; word games are not reality. The answers would be different if the question was who they teach. Yet there is a truth in this little test; teaching is a relational activity.

Certainly teaching involves subject material; there is content to be conveyed. But the aim of the exercise involves conveying information from one person to another. The best teachers do more than convey information; they whet the appetite for learning, they develop the student’s capacity to understand, analyse, explore and discover other information. The well-taught student is not limited to the information their teacher has imparted to them. Good education is not really a curriculum matter but a teaching skill that relies heavily on the relationship the teacher can develop with the student. (more…)

Editorial: Multi-tasking by drawing

Editorial

One of the neat tools I’ve got in my Bible-study-leader’s kit bag is getting people to represent a passage visually on a big blank sheet of paper. It’s a particularly useful tool for the epistles, where there is often a tight chain of logic we need to tease out if we’re to read and understand the passage properly. (more…)