Christian
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We must stop describing things that aren’t church as ‘church’
Last year I wrote a piece called The Church is the biggest enemy of the church. I talked about the Reformers’ distinction between the visible church — i.e. the ‘church’ we see on earth — and the invisible church, i.e. what the creed speaks of when it says “one holy, catholic and apostolic church.” I…
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The church is waking up without waking up
Over the last week I’ve seen a couple of articles coming from within the British church establishment that suggest people are beginning to wake up to something big happening soon. The first thing I saw was an article on Premier Christianity, Pete Greig is warning Christians to ‘Prepare for War’: Greig doesn’t make specific predictions,…
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New Song: Give us love
I’ve just written and released my first ever song! It’s a church song, designed to be sung congregationally. It’s called “Give us love”, and it’s about how we don’t have the love God wants of us by nature, we need to ask him for it every day. It’s kind of a summary of the main…
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Atheism is a spent force
A couple of things have made me think of atheism lately, which has made me realise how much things have changed in the last few years. I used to spend hours online debating atheists – far too much time, if I’m honest. Time which would have been far better spent doing something more productive. (I…
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STOP doing evangelism! I’m serious!!
In this video I want to explain why I think the way the church is going about evangelism at the moment is not helping and in fact even hinders the gospel. I think we need to stop evangelising and start doing discipleship instead. This video was posted to Understand the Bible, but I think it’s…
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Should Christians support Israel?
One of the things I find most difficult about modern politics is the question of Israel. Should I, as a Christian, support Israel or not? Should I support Palestine or not? I think a lot of Christians have the idea that all Christians should support Israel unconditionally – or at least, should mostly support Israel.…
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What is a ‘salvation issue’?
Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a few people talking about the question of what is and is not a “salvation issue”. The presenting issue is sexuality and marriage (yes, again). Jayne Ozanne, who is a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage within the church, wrote an article in Premier Christianity arguing that sex outside…
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Why Christians should be ‘conspiracy theorists’
Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar… you can’t tell me that’s just a coincidence. When I was growing up, conspiracy theorists had a bad reputation. A conspiracy theorist was someone who usually had too much time on their hands and was obsessed with ‘out-there’ theories about what the shadowy elite pulling the strings were…
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More safeguarding is not the answer
I’ve been thinking a lot about safeguarding recently. If you’re involved in church circles it’s difficult to avoid – not least because church leaders being investigated for safeguarding is becoming a depressingly regular occurrence. The latest leader to fall is Mike Pilavachi, who is the co-founder of Soul Survivor. Commentators keep telling us we need…
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New Book: Confused by Grace
I’ve written a book! It’s a Christian book – here’s the blurb: I’m going to be doing a video about it in the next few days, which you will be able to see on Understand the Bible, but you can buy it now from Amazon (Kindle or paperback editions available).