Mission – Ministry – Life
Mission is an extreme sport. And to help me get in shape I'm spending this week at the BMS World Mission training centre in Birmingham (UK) doing the course they run to prepare people for going overseas as short / mid term volunteers. It's a strange experience being a student, these days I spend lots... Continue Reading →
So the votes are counted. The result was close but is for ‘Leave’ which has created a sense of shock and disbelief with whiff of crisis. What follows is my own reaction to events rather than a thought through roadmap for progress. The trouble with a referendum is that it is a blunt instrument. At... Continue Reading →
The 06:30 train from Macclesfield on a cold Saturday morning is not normally something to celebrate but it was the first leg of a great day attending the Baptist Assembly. This year held in Oxford. The day packed a lot into a short timeframe and was a significant improvement on last year. The morning started... Continue Reading →
Following on from my previous posts about mission we used the Sundays leading up to Easter to run a short series called ‘Finding your way back to God’. This was based on the book by Jon and Dave Ferguson. However, as well as the book itself they produce sermon outlines, powerpoint sides, testimony videos to... Continue Reading →
“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right” is attributed to Henry Ford. But whatever its origins it captures something of the challenge of sharing our faith and engaging in mission; too often we think we can’t do anything so we do nothing. In many areas of life it is not... Continue Reading →
When preparing people for overseas mission reputable agencies train folk in cross cultural mission. To understand the language and culture of the place they are going to – and to understand their own cultural biases and background and the way they shape who they are. To be effective in mission, longer term, you need to... Continue Reading →
In Luke 10 Jesus doesn’t just send the 72 out – he gives them a strategy to follow. It’s the same strategy he gave the apostles when he sent them in chapter 9; it’s a strategy Jesus uses in his own ministry and which Paul and others copy. The difference is that here in chapter... Continue Reading →
Motivation is important. It is what makes you do things and is made up from a variety of sources. Some of our motivation comes from things outside us, for example seeing the horror of the migrant ‘Jungle’ in Calais, motivates us to do things to reduce suffering. Some of our motivation comes from inside us,... Continue Reading →
It risks stating the obvious but engagement in mission is part of discipleship. That’s to say that because we are followers of Jesus we will participate actively in his ministry; not least because he calls us to. Preaching from Luke 5, where Jesus calls the first disciples after their all night fishing trip had caught... Continue Reading →
January has seen me preaching a short series about mission or more accurately about being missional and I want to share some of the ideas that lay behind the series to help resource others who want to do something similar. Inevitably some of what follows will be more sermon like and less nuanced than many... Continue Reading →
Distinct Reflections 