During COVID-19 lockdowns, churches were forced to make greater use of online provision. Most saw significant engagement with their output beyond their regular congregations. Of course, early figures may have eld to false optimism, once we had accounted for people clicking on and off links and other Christians “church surfing” the numbers weren’t as huge… Continue reading After COVID – let’s not forget about evangelism
Category: Church life
Church Discipline and Church abuse
There’s been some recent discussion on social media about the use of church discipline and whether or not it can be harmful and lead to examples of abuse. The discussion was prompted by this article by Steve Kneale which was then shared by John Stevens – you can read the thread below John’s tweet to… Continue reading Church Discipline and Church abuse
How we respond to concerns about abusive and bullying culture matters for the culture
There have been a range of responses to the recent scandals and reviews concerning abuse in the church. On the one hand there are those who I think wish it would all just go away. We’ve identified a few rotten apples, they’ve been dealt with so let’s move on. There have been others however who… Continue reading How we respond to concerns about abusive and bullying culture matters for the culture
Why is Sheep Stealing such a bad thing?
Last Sunday, I wrote about the issue of sheep stealing by which I meant the attempt to poach/steal/attract people from another church to join yours. But why is this a problem? Surely we are part of the one family of God, surely as long as people are in the kingdom it doesn’t matter too much… Continue reading Why is Sheep Stealing such a bad thing?
Sheep stealing, transfer growth and the end of the pandemic
There are times when it becomes necessary to move from one church to another, this might be because a church has departed from what the Bible teaches on primary issues touching on the Gospel or because you have changed your own position on some thing important and central to the beliefs and practices of that… Continue reading Sheep stealing, transfer growth and the end of the pandemic
Paedo-baptism and covenant membership
The other day I highlighted three of the big arguments for paedo-baptism, here is the fourth. This has particularly become associated with the Federal Vision thinking of Douglas Wilson, Peter Leithart and James Jordan, however it is not exclusive to them, rather you find it present in a lot of contemporary paedo-baptist arguments and particularly… Continue reading Paedo-baptism and covenant membership
The problem with some of the big arguments for infant baptism
Over the years, I’ve consistently heard three main arguments for infant baptism. These are: That when preaching, the apostles announced that the promise was for “you and your children.” Therefore, Christians can confidently expect their children to be within the new covenant promise. That baptism is the New Covenant equivalent of circumcision, that circumcision was… Continue reading The problem with some of the big arguments for infant baptism
Doug Wilson and child safeguarding
In this article I am going to engage with perhaps the least easy to read and write about of the concerns raised about Doug Wilson, I’ve titled this “Doug Wilson and child safeguarding” which is perhaps an understatement of the issue but I’ve titled it that way not to minimise the issues but rather to… Continue reading Doug Wilson and child safeguarding
We need to be honest about who we include and who we don’t include
A few weeks back I wrote arguing that we should be willing to consider the possibility of some form of immunity certification if it enables large gatherings to open up sooner enabling capacity audiences, mingling, singing and the end of social distancing and face masks at such events. There is a concern that such measures… Continue reading We need to be honest about who we include and who we don’t include
Complementarianism and Singleness
I want to engage a little bit further on the question of complementarianism and its implications for church life. I want to pick up particularly on a question raised by someone on twitter which was to the affect of “what does complementarianism have to say to single people?” They used themselves as an example, they… Continue reading Complementarianism and Singleness
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