Most of us have had it drilled into us that there is in fact one fruit of the Spirit rather than fruits of the Spirit. In other words, we bear fruit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness etc. This means that there isn’t a pick and mix approach to things. I can’t claim to… Continue reading The gift of the Spirit
Posts
COVID-19 risk management update for churches
With Boris Johnson announcing an end to the “plan-B” measures for England from next Thursday, I thought it might be worth giving a little bit of an update on risk management for England. Unfortunately, this has to be very country specific as the changes will not apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Here is… Continue reading COVID-19 risk management update for churches
Contextual visions and dreams
If you’ve not had chance to yet, do have a listen to last week’s Faithroots Podcast where I was talking to Jonny Mellor of Church Central and Sputnik. Jonny helpfully gets us thinking about the way that Christians should engage with the arts and culture generally. In the conversation we talk about Daniel as a… Continue reading Contextual visions and dreams
Representative justice and mercy
The reaction to the Downing Street parties scandal has been fascinating. I wrote a little bit about his here the other day but I wanted to pick up a bit further on one particular response. It’s best represented by this tweet from Owen Jones. Obviously, Jones is driven in part by an assumption that punishment… Continue reading Representative justice and mercy
Guest post – Training, pastoring and planting in Tanzania
One of the aims of Faithroots is to encourage training and planting in harder to reach and unreached places. Here in the UK this means a lot of our focus is on urban contexts but in some parts of the world the picture is reversed in terms of where the hard to reach places are.… Continue reading Guest post – Training, pastoring and planting in Tanzania
Where is COVID-19 going?
This is a question that pastors and church leaders will be asking as we head into 2022 and approach the 2nd anniversary of the pandemic being declared. We want to know what will happen in terms of the risk of illness, hospitalisation, and death so that we can help our congregations prepare for what might… Continue reading Where is COVID-19 going?
Why do we struggle to talk about pastors and depression?
A few years back I was asked to cover a couple of sessions for a ministry training course. One of the sessions was on “failure.” The request came with a couple of those expected awkward jokes along the lines of “we aren’t picking you for any specific reason.” Indeed, at the time, arguably I’d not… Continue reading Why do we struggle to talk about pastors and depression?
Art Attack
In this week’s podcast I talk to Jonny Mellor of Church Central and Sputnik. We talk about Christians in the arts Why we should engage the arts Between legalism and licence -how do we make godly decisions about our engagement with music, film, art, drama etc Lecrae Daniel in Babylon as a paradigm for cultural… Continue reading Art Attack
Discerning a calling (3) Questions to ask
I’ve been sharing some posts recently on how we discern a calling for Gospel ministry. Partly I’m hoping that these will be generally useful but I also have a specific concern in mind. Regular readers of Faithroots will know that my passion is to see gospel workers planting and leading churches here in the urban… Continue reading Discerning a calling (3) Questions to ask
Discerning a calling (2) Why we need to look backwards
Some of the questions you will want to ask when helping someone to discern a calling focus on what has happened in the past? Can’t we just forget the past and look forward to the future? Well, there’s certainly a risk that we can refuse to consider people for ministry now because of what has… Continue reading Discerning a calling (2) Why we need to look backwards
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