The first question I wanted to answer at our first ever launch team meeting was: ‘What is Church?’ Now – happily – no one in the launch team was actually asking this question! But really – isn’t this a question we should be continually asking, and making sure we have clear in our minds? What is church? What is our mission? Who are we, what are we meant to be doing? Continue reading
Mum has left for a couple of days to lead and preach at a girls getaway weekend for church – and so I thought that renting Pixar’s latest release was a sure fire way of treating the kids and hopefully distracting them from the fact that mummy wasn’t around this evening… boy did I get that wrong…
Tonight I went Trick or Treating for the first time in my life… and I’m thinking about doing it again…
You would think that a good Calvinist and Reformed Baptist would be writing about the 500th anniversary of the reformation today, and not Halloween – but it is precisely because of reformation theology that I can write this post, where as a few years ago I never would have dreamt of it.
We never went ‘Trick or Treating’ when I was a kid, it just wasn’t something our family did. “Well, we’re Christians, and Christians don’t really ‘do’ Halloween.” I grew up accepting this, and believing it – I didn’t fully understand it, but I trusted my parents, and the teaching of my church’s tradition. I love that my mum and dad were careful about what they exposed me and my brother to, and that they trusted their own church leaders. But now that I’m a pastor and a parent myself ‘because my mum said so’ is no longer a good enough answer! I needed to work through it myself. And part of that process was talking to my mum about how they came to the decision they did when I was a child.
If you have been redirected here from the Worthing Tabernacle YouTube channel – welcome!
Failing all other attempts to find a place to host the handout for our Revelation Series I have turned to my blog to host the file. You can see an image of the handout below, and under that is a PDF copy available to download.
I hope it is helpful in your study of Revelation.
“Mary did you know… that a song was going to be written on the assumption that you suffered a severe bout of amnesia the moment the angel had left you…”
Pentatonix did a great rendition of this song a couple of years ago, and its currently got over 91.5 Million views on YouTube! But the problem with that is that over 91 million people have heard some pretty poor theology…
Theologically it is a weak song. But…I have a confession…I quite like it! Having said that, I also enjoy Wizzard’s ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’ and Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas everybody’ but I don’t want to sing them in church! Nor does me enjoying them mean there is any spiritual worth to them. But I think there is something about ‘Mary did you know’ that is worth commending, and it is this: Continue reading
Over Easter at Worthing Tab we had our usual Maundy Thursday seminar. For the last couple of years we have looked at the subject of suffering and how we can only understand the suffering in the world by understanding the suffering of the cross. This year however we had a seminar on the resurrection of Jesus. In the seminar I wanted to explore the resurrection under three headings – fantasy, fact and faith. You can listen to a rough audio recording of the seminar via SoundCloud linked below – I’ve also given the seminar outline below. I should also say thanks to Glen Scrivener for his help in thinking through some of the issues for this seminar.
Questions
Outline:
1. Welcome
2. Introduction
The purpose of our Seminar this evening is to examine the Resurrection of Jesus Continue reading
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