I enjoyed a great day of fellowship and ministry encouragement yesterday at a conference run by Crossway Anglican Churches. Really stirring and stimulating stuff. (more…)
Category Archives: Mission
Following the fearful apostle
Everyday Ministry, Life, Sola Panel
A second anniversary for Sunday
Pastoral Ministry, Sola Panel
Many North Americans readers will know the second great anniversary that occurs this Sunday is that 200 years ago today, Adoniram and Ann Judson sailed from Massachusetts, on February 19, 1812, apparently the first Protestant American missionaries to travel overseas. (more…)
What is the Mission of the Church?
Thought, Sola Panel
There have been many predictions about the next evangelical crisis. Perhaps correctly, many have predicted that it will again be on the nature and authority of the Bible. Is the telltale sign of this the fact that the post conservative post-modernists have tried to change the argument from being about the reliability/accuracy of the Bible to the interpretation of the Bible, all in the name of wanting to be an insider of this “evangelical” club? (more…)
Does the future have a church?
Pastoral Ministry
Tim Thornborough offers here a rough guide to where Protestantism is in the UK, and a look at some particular indicators that suggest several major strategic directions that we need to consider for the future. (more…)
A tale of three cities
Pastoral Ministry
Sydney
It’s 7 am Thursday, and I am sitting in a café on York Street in the central business district of Sydney. This is my hometown. The coffee, in case you were wondering, is okay. The Suncorp building towers above me, Grosvenor Place tall behind me, and every bus coming off the Harbour Bridge stops outside this café. (more…)
Step by step to Mexico
Everyday Ministry
Problems with ‘the call’
Everyday Ministry
This is the third in our Sola Saturday series on giving up your life for Christ in anticipation of the July/August issue of The Briefing. In our first post, Robert Doyle looked at the concept of giving up your life in the context of worship. Then Dave Andrews tackled the important question “What should I be doing with my time [as I give up my life]?” This week, Philip Miles deals with giving up one’s life in missionary service and the problems with the theology of ‘the call’.
‘Missional lifestyle’: Home (the idolatries)
Life
In my last post, I suggested some of the opportunities that our homes provide for serving God in mission within his world. But a home doesn’t just create opportunities for mission, it also creates opportunities for idolatry. Instead of being a place where God is worshipped and served, home can itself become a god we worship—or a shrine for the worship of other gods.
‘Missional lifestyle’: Home
Life
I’m hoping in my next few posts to look at a few different areas of life (home, education, work, sport, etc.). I want to discuss the opportunities that each present for being involved in the lives of others—for their good and their salvation. I also want to examine some of the idolatries that we can be tempted to serve in each of these areas—idolatries that have the potential to destroy both us and our witness by luring our hearts away from Christ. I’m going to start with the most obvious one: our homes.
There are two big opportunities for mission that our homes open up for us: proximity and hospitality.
‘Missional lifestyle’: Lifestyle and legalism
Life
In my previous post, I started a short series on ‘missional lifestyle’, and set out a basic framework for discussing what that might look like. But before I jump into the details, I thought I ought to write a second ground-clearing post—this time focusing on the relationship between lifestyle and legalism.
‘Missional lifestyle’: A basic framework
Everyday Ministry
On a church camp recently (not our own church, but another one), I had the chance to take part in a discussion with a group of women about what a ‘missional lifestyle’ might look like for us in our various life situations. (My husband Dave was involved in a parallel discussion with the men.)
Stimulated by that discussion and a few of the loose ends left over at the end of it, I thought I might turn my thoughts into a short series of blog posts on the subject. I’ll do my best to write in a way that isn’t fixated on the things that are particular to my own situation. Instead, as far as possible, I’ll try and think the issues through in a way that opens up the conversation to other people in different life circumstances. But if the examples along the way tend to be a bit ‘mums-y’ at times, I hope you’ll understand and forgive!!
The basic framework for the conversation at the camp went like this:
Do we need a new word?
Everyday Ministry
‘Mission’ is one of those words that is common in our Christian vocabulary, but that can have a wide and often confusing variety of meanings. Narrowing the definition slightly to the activities associated with ‘going out’, rather than ‘an aim or objective’, we still have a wide usage. We go on beach mission, our church is involved in mission, we are a member of a mission society, and we pray for, send, support and even go as missionaries. But what does ‘mission’ mean in these contexts? Is it time to introduce a new word so that we can be more accurate about what these activities might and might not be and so that our support and prayers can be better informed and focussed? (more…)
The Geneva Push
Pastoral Ministry
It is a little-known fact that Calvin and the Genevan Consistory sent hundreds of trained missionaries into France and the rest of the Europe to preach the gospel and plant new congregations of believers. In this interview, The Briefing talks to Al Stewart about the ongoing importance of church planting in light of Al’s work with Evangelism Ministries in Sydney and The Geneva Push, a new Australia-wide church-planting network whose name is derived from the work of Calvin and his colleagues.
Freedom to do what you don’t like
Everyday Ministry, Life
There are two kinds of freedom. Christian freedom is the freedom to be a servant of others (Gal 5:13)—the freedom to do what I don’t like. But the freedom that allows me to do whatever I want is not Christian freedom; it is license and sometimes licentiousness. When in the name of Christian liberty, I am free to do what I wanted to do anyway, a deep suspicion enters my mind; it is not that God wants to deny me any pleasure, but that I know that my motives are corrupted by sin. (more…)