Category Archives: Church

Why does God bother with the church?

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I like a couple of illustrations that Philip Yancey uses to  explore what God might think of the church, with all its imperfections:-

The composer Igor Stravinsky once wrote a new piece that contained a difficult violin passage.  After several weeks of rehearsal the solo violinist came to Stravinksy and said that he could not play it.  He had given it his best effort but found the passage too difficult, even unplayable.  Stravinsky replied, “I understand that. 
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Adiaphora: agreeing to disagree

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In my short piece on Faultlines in Evangelicalism, I mentioned post-modernism’s distrust of ‘certaintist’ positions.  This contrasts with evangelicals’ perceived desire to be certain about everything.  I was interested to see John Stott in his book Evangelical Truth make a plea for evangelicals to distinguish carefully between essentials of the faith which cannot be compromised and those matters of secondary importance – adiaphora – in which there is a sincere disagreement amongst evangelicals as to what Scriptures teaches.  …

Carson on MacLaren

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I’ve been reading (well, listening to, actually, on my MP3 player) Brian McLaren’s book, A Generous Orthodoxy. McLaren is a leader in the Emerging Church movement and is an engaging writer and speaker. I found D.A. Carson’s review of McLaren’s writings in Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 158-182, to be fair and perceptive. Carson evidently thinks that McLaren, in his generosity, is giving too much away. I’m inclined to agree with him. Anyway, here’s a summary of Carson’s comments.…

Fault-lines in Evangelicalism

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We have been witnessing a number of important trends within evangelicalism. I’ve been trying to sort out in what I fondly call my mind what some of these trends might be, and how they might be connected to each other. The following basic analysis emerged.

1. New ways of doing church. This trend reacts against traditional passive/conformist approaches, and prefers authenticity to slick professionalism. Interested in developing ‘fresh expressions’ of church. It emphasises development of communities of faith, not just individual salvation.…