lying to god in worship

I have been part of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship’s conference on missional church (see personal blog) and one of the speakers was Mark Labberton. I had never heard of him, but I have to say that I think he was brilliant. I ran out to buy his book, The Dangerous Act of Worship, and [...]

incarnating into an aquarium

Here is a quote from Philip Yancy’s brilliant The Jesus I Never Knew. It highlights the radical nature of the Incarnation. (HT to Anthony Adams.)

‘I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is not an easy task. I had to run a portable chemical [...]

a red letter day

As I indicated in a comment on my last post, Michael Frost sent me an email asking me what I had done to stir up some folk who had accused me of being a “red letterist”. He asked me what that was. I responded that I think it points to those folks (usually [...]

paul would be appalled

As many of you know, I have a distinct dislike for religiosity and religious people in general. Perhaps it is the rebel (holy or unholy?) in me but there is something in me that wants to offend such folk and challenge their prissy religious sensibilities. I maintain the belief that it is Jesus [...]

acting our way into a new way of thinking

As should be obvious by now, we need to develop our ways of knowing God to be able to be true disciples. But it goes beyond just adding right actions and feelings to the equation of right knowledge, I believe the place for us to start is by focusing on the action piece [...]

the full monty (…of discipleship)

Not forgetting Orthodoxy: Having noted that orthodoxy (right belief) is not enough, I am not suggesting that it is not important. Far from it! Right belief is an irreplaceable element of any discipleship in the way of Jesus. However the church nearly always sees orthodoxy narrowly,  as a commitment to propositional truth, assuming [...]

going troppo! the way of obedience

Bonhoeffer believed that the only way to truly comprehend the revelation of God in scripture is by approaching it with the pre-commitment to obey it. For those interested in weird theological terms, he calls this ‘tropological exegesis’ or simply ‘tropology’.  Bonhoeffer can therefore speak of discipleship as a ‘problem of exegesis’ and goes on to [...]

obedience as worship

When one looks at the Gospel records themselves it is clear that “…Jesus did not ask for homage but obedience. He always had much more to lose from his friends than from his enemies. Admiration has always blunted his sword. It serves to dull the original outrage of his mission. Veneration assumes [...]

50 ways to leave your lover

Human beings, including Jesus’ disciples, have become artful in developing ways in which to escape from the all-encompassing claims of God in Jesus. Any discussion about true encounters with God must therefore include ways in which we try and avoid him, to qualify the God relationship, to ameliorate the tension he creates in our lives. [...]

obsessed with disciple-making

It is interesting that when we really look at the dangerous stories of the phenomenal movements, at the most uncomplicated level, they appear to the observer simply as disciple-making systems. But the rather funny thing is that they never appear to get beyond this—they never move beyond mere disciple-making.  This is because it is at [...]

god’s roll of the dice

When dealing with discipleship, and the related capacity to generate authentic followers of Jesus, we are dealing with that single most crucial factor that will in the end determine the quality of the whole—if we fail at this point then we must fail in all the others. In fact if we fail here, it is [...]

action as sacrament

I am currently at the Church Resource Ministries (US) conference and am doing a series of talks on Jesus and Hebraic Spirituality.  But as we are exploring the mDNA of discipleship at the moment, I thought it worth commenting on the sacramental validity of holy actionand radical goodness. As many would be aware, I am [...]

staying close to jesus

The last blog on this topic caused a bit of a ruckus. A nice one, and one well worth pursuing. So lets take it one step further….Most people reading this blog would be aware of the distinctive meaning of the Hebrew word for knowledge; a word that is used from both human intercourse [...]

existence communication

As we begin an exploration into the next element of mDNA…discipleship and disciple-making, I thought we could start our journey by exploring the idea of existence communication…a little piece of Soren Kierkegaard’s weird but wonderful mind. First consider these two quotes from two very different people.
“We can only live changes: we cannot think our way [...]

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