Church Planting (Page 16)

Church Planting (Page 16)

When Helping Hurts

This is an extremely provocative book and I absolutely loved it. Although written for a North American cultural mindset, it is certainly applicable across much of Europe. The byline is, ‘How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor..and yourself’. We live in a culture where the concept of a ‘missions trip’ is now almost the ‘done…

Is Our Kindness Helping Or Hurting People?

What enters our minds when we think of inner city housing schemes, council estates and/or projects? What do the residents need to alleviate the problems they face? It is easy to try to appease a guilty conscience by doing ‘good stuff’ in these areas. Maybe helping out in a children’s club or doing some other community project. Social projects are two a…

Evangelism ‘On the Way!’

Isn’t it fascinating how the Lord Jesus used so many informal settings as teaching opportunities. Reading through Luke’s gospel offers us some revealing insights as to how Jesus used this style of teaching as he travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem. Luke contains all sorts of stories and questions and metaphors for how Jesus interacted outside of the pulpit, if…

‘Off the shelf’ Christmas assemblies for schools

Being the new chaplain on the scene, it falls to me to deliver this year’s Christmas assembly in the local high school next week. The expectation is for me to deliver a short seasonal message to a large group of teenagers (who don’t really want to be there) to help them think more about Christmas.…

How far should we go in living for Jesus?

What do we do with the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 10:39: Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. The context is sending out the 12 to proclaim the ‘kingdom of heaven’ (v7). They were sent out as ‘sheep amongst wolves’ (v16) but were encouraged to stay firm in Jesus and to…