Category Archives: Church

God bless the ‘Sunday Assembly’

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Yesterday morning (9th November 2014), the Norwich ‘Sunday Assembly’ held its first meeting.

Describing itself as ‘a global movement for wonder and good’, the Sunday Assembly sets out to offer much that a Christian worship service might offer – including communal singing, time for reflection, an address, tea and coffee at the end (can’t get much more religious than that!) – but without God.

The folks behind the Sunday Assembly are peaceable humanists.  They regard themselves as godless, but not anti-god.  …

Mutual encouragement

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While this is the special duty of the ministers of the gospel, 1 Tim 6:2; 2 Tim 4:2; Tit 2:6,15, it is also the duty of all the members of the churches -and a most important, but much neglected duty. This does not refer to public exhortation, which more appropriately pertains to the ministers of the gospel, but to that private watch and care which the individual members of the church should have over one another.…

Characteristics of the church

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The church is described in the ancient creeds as:-

1. One, Eph 4:4-5.
2. Holy, 1 Pet 2:9; 1 Cor 1:2.
3. Catholic, Col 3:11; Gal 3:28.
4. Apostolic, Eph 2:20; Acts 1:8.…

Sacrament and mystery

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The word ‘sacrament’, explains Donald Macleod,  comes from the Latin sacramentum, which referred to the oath taken by a Roman Soldier.  It has therefore been suggested that the Lord’s Supper is the taking of an oath to Christ and an entering into an obligation of loyalty to him.  There is, no doubt, truth in this.  But the word sacramentum is not a biblical word, and cannot therefore the recruited for theological purposes for a meaning that is not sanctioned by Scripture itself.…

Discussion Starters, Jn 13:1-17; Lk 22:7-23

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(a) In John 13:14, Jesus says, “You should wash one another’s feet.” Most Christian groups do not have a foot-washing liturgy. Why not? In what ways can we fulfil this command even if we do not follow it literally?

(b) In Luke 22:19, Jesus says, in connection with the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Most Christian groups do have a ‘Lord’s Supper’ liturgy. Why? Looking at this passage in Luke, what would you say are the main things about Jesus that we are to ‘remember’ when we take communion?…

2 Thess 3:6-15 – Against the tide – sermon notes

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The church in Thessalonica – a model church in many ways, 1:3f.

There were some problems. See v11. Some of them ‘toadying up’ to the more well-to-do (Acts 17:5 hints at the cultural background).

Any vision for the church will need a way of dealing with problems like this:-

1. With authority, v6

Paul had already offered a milder admonition, 1 Thess 4:11f.

‘Stepping out of line’ – military terminology.

Apostolic authority means ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ’: that is, with his own authority.…

The Church’s failures

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In any account that we might give of the Christian Church, we must honestly acknowledge its failures.  There have been occasions – too many occasions – when it has accepted the world’s values and priorities, and accommodated itself to the prevailing culture, and rationalised its own unfaithfulness.

Among its most notable failings we must mention:-

  • Its approval and even glamorisation of the medieval Crusades, when European knights rode forth to recover the holy places from Islam by force.
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On going to church, anyway

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In some ways, the concept of ‘going to church’ is not a very biblical one.  The idea of travelling to a ‘church’ in order to ‘worship’ is not quite what the Bible means either by ‘church’ or by ‘worship’.

Still, there are mentions within the pages of the New Testament of believers meeting together on the first day of the week, and of gathering as local congregations in one another’s homes.  And the writer to the Hebrews urges his readers not to give up meeting together (Heb 10:25).…

Adelphopoiesis: ‘the making of brothers’

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It is interesting that both human rights activist Peter Tatchell and politician Adrian Trett have asserted that in times past the Christian church has actively endorsed same-sex marriage.  And in both cases they have appealed as their sole source of evidence to John Boswell’s book The marriage of likeness: same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe.

Boswell argued that the ancient rite of ‘adelphopoiesis’ should be regarded as equivalent to same-sex marriage.  It would follow, then, that sections of the modern Christian church are denying its own history when it opposes same-sex marraige today.…

Has worship music lost its soul?

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Writing in a recent issue of Christianity magazine, Andy Walton asks if some of our modern worship songs so lack freshness, creativity and effort, that they could easily have been written by a blindfolded monkey.

I must admit to having some sympathy with this position, even though I certainly don’t want to seem ungrateful for all the skill, effort and commitment that musicians put into our worship ‘experience’.

I’m not going to comment on the musical quality of today’s worship songs, not because it’s unimportant, but because its importance is secondary.  …