A New Blog in Town - Christ The Truth

Head over to christthetruth.wordpress.com for a chance to worship God with your mind. You will find some awesome theology to get you thinking and get you praising! It's written by Glen Scrivener, one of my best friends since we lived and worked together at All Souls, Langham Place back in 2000-2001.

The name of the blog - "Christ The Truth" expresses its core conviction: that Jesus Christ IS The Truth. Just as there is no Way to God outside of Jesus, and we cannot experience the Life of God outside of Jesus, so also we do not know the Truth about God unless we begin with Jesus Christ. Yet very often we use the G word: G-O-D as if by simply using it everyone knows who we're talking about. This is not the case. If I were to say I enjoyed watching 11 men kicking a leather ball around a pitch, and you said the same, it could be that we support the same team but more likely we don't! It's the same in theology - which is to say it's true for all of life - the true meaning of G-O-D is discovered as the Spirit brings us into union with Jesus the Son of the Father.

So go and have a read. As you'll discover, one obvious point of relevance is in the whole issue of inter-faith dialogue, which I wrote about here.

More free Christian Audio

Hurry hurry over to Christian Audio - you have three more days to download one of 6 books for FREE using the code THANKS2007. (It's a special Thanksgiving offer.)

I still haven't decided, but I'm tempted by John Piper's biographical-sermon of William Wilberforce. You may have seen the film "Amazing Grace" but that won't have told you just how evangelical Wilberforce was. While he is famous (rightly so) for fighting against slavery, he knew full well that only the gospel of Christ crucified and justification-by-faith could change the country.

Listen to Jonathan Edwards for free!

Every month the good people at Christian Audio release one of their books as a free download. This month the download is Jonathan Edwards' classic "The Religious Affections". Click here to order it and enter NOV2007 at the relevant stage to get it for free. You will have to register as a customer. Bear in mind that the download is 12 files, most of which are 35MB, so you're looking at over 400MB to download. Not one for dial up users! Quite helpfully each section will, when converted, fill an audio CD that could be played on a regular CD player.

But what a great offer - a chance to listen to a hugely important book. Section One is brilliant because it shows how important the affections (think emotions but deeper) are for true religion (by which Edwards' means true Christianity of course). Many Christians are divided into "lots of emotions but not much truth" vs. "lots of Bible truth but we never appear happy"! Okay, it's a caricature, but you may recognise the problem. This classic book is a never-bettered study on what does and does not constitute true religious affections.

Whether you download it or not, make a mental note to check Christian Audio each month for their latest offer.

The beauty of lives changed by Jesus, changing other lives

Here's another link to Kaleo Church. It's the account of how God changed the life of a woman and is now using her to share the love of Jesus with others. Go and read it.

This is why I want to be ordained and serve as a minister/vicar/elder (pick your favourite jargon!). To see changed lives changing the lives of others. This woman (no name is given) was a keen Christian but needed to rediscover what grace meant. Her description of the change in her life is a joy to read:

About a year ago I lived in a really amazing place. I loved it there! Life was good... and then one day I found this random door, this strange door that I had never noticed. I opened it up and was astonished at what I saw. That whole time I had been living in a tiny bathroom and on the other side of that door was a huge house... the rest of God's house. Since then I have been running from room to room, jumping on the beds, sliding down the banister and exploring every nook and cranny, fumbling around as I try to take it all in. I know that I will never get to every room, but I am so blessed by what I have seen. God used Kaleo to open that door for me... a door to show me just how much I didn't know or understand and how much there was to discover in Christ.

N.B. You don't have to be ordained to see lives changed - but I get paid for the privilege of sharing Jesus with others!

Kaleo San Diego: A Church that knows why it exists

I'm a big fan of goodmanson.com and enjoy the occasional visit to the website of the church in which he is a pastor: Kaleo San Diego Church. They have recently updated their website - go take a look!

Central to the page are four tabs: 'Blog', 'Message', 'Motivation' and 'Mission'. You should read the last three because:

• It shows a clearly thought out reason for the church's existence;
• The theology is great!
• I want to use these myself one day.

Many churches blunder along, never sure of what they are doing and (more importantly) why they are doing what they are doing. Go and take a look and get excited about what God is calling you to do.

Keep the children amused during summer

The excellent Lifehacker website is generally most useful when it comes to using computers, internet etc to actually make life easier. But they are not limited to all things geekery. These two links may give some ideas for keeping the kids amused during the long summer weeks.

10 Cheap things to do with young children

Make your own Flubber (or follow the links for play dough, silly putty and more!)

Do you know any other good resources?

Diocese of Lichfield and leaders who grow churches

Okay, so being back online hasn't yet produced a flurry of posts. Bear with me!

Yesterday I met the other prospective deacons from Lichfield Diocese, who like me will be ordained 30th September at 10am (you are invited!). One of the highlights was hearing Archdeacon Bob Jackson speaking about the Diocese's commitment to growth, rather than organized retreat. He said that this extended to looking for vicars and curates who will lead churches into growth. It was very exciting to hear of official structures looking to see mission high on the priority, and not simply affirming this without practicing it!

A favourite website of mine is goodmanson.com, named after a church planter / leader at Kaleo Church, San Diego, and part of the fabulous Acts 29 Church Planting Network. Go check it out! If you want fresh biblical thinking about how to lead churches that proclaim the gospel and transform the world, here is a good place to start.

Bob Jackson said that the Church of England was slowly realising that we are not a pastoral institution caring for a Christian country, but a missionary church in a post-Christian culture. This needs to affect the priorities that church leaders have, and the following two posts will help:

Leading a Movement not an Institution
Eldership that leads a transformational community