flickr: The Arches
A few years ago, our family of six left a congregation full of parents with young children, and joined a church made up mostly of university students.1 This wasn’t an ideological statement on our part: it was simply because my husband works in university ministry, and that’s where we needed to be at the time. But it’s made me aware of some of the benefits and costs of going to church with people from a different age and stage from your own.
After all those great posts by Lionel Windsor about ‘gospel speech’, I thought it might be good to write about what this might look like in practice, with a post or two about getting to know families at our local school.
flickr: AndersRuffCustomDesigns
It all started when my friend Rachel sent an email to Jess, Tanya and me:
I’ve been dwelling on how much I want to see families I meet at pre-school and school become Christians. And the best thing I know to do is pray. I think you all share the same passion – why not pray together? How fun to enjoy seeing God work!
Joined-up Life
Andrew Cameron
Inter-Varsity Press, Nottingham, 2011. 336 pp.
Ethics may be the reason I’m still a Christian. Each time I find my way of seeing the world challenged—and it is challenged—by atheism, by the claims of other religions, by my own doubts and questions about issues like the reliability of the Bible, I seem to be won over again and again by Jesus. When I hear his teaching in the gospels, and realize how he truly lived out his preaching of loving even enemies when he died for me, it just seems so right and good. (more…)
Thinking of leaving your church? Simon Flinders takes a look at what church is, why you’d leave (and why you wouldn’t) and how to leave well. (more…)
There are those who say that singleness is better, but unfortunately that is not the experience of many who have been single long-term. Tim Adeney looks at why, and what we can do to love and serve the single people in our churches. (more…)
From the bountiful crop of recent books on church, Chris Green looks at three well worth reading.
Total Church: A radical reshaping around gospel and community (more…)