Missional Living (Page 10)
Tattoos on The heart: Winning Gangs with Compassion
A good friend of mine gave me this book recently because he felt like it would encourage me in terms of my own ministry here in Niddrie. This book was a New York Times best seller and charts the ministry of Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest and founder and director of ‘Homeboy Industries’.…
Understanding the people we are trying to reach for Jesus
Research is a key component in any kind of church ministry. It doesn’t matter whether you are in a settled congregation, renewing a dying work, or planting from scratch, we need to research. What kind of church do we want to be? If we are going to answer this question with any degree of…
What not to say to single women in your church (or men for that matter)!
A helpful link here from Kevin DeYoung on the thorny issue of singleness and how we should fight the urge to say stupid things and give out cliched advice.
13 Ways the Church can Respond to the Needs of Bankrupt Britain!
I read a book this week called, ‘Bankrupt Britain: An Atlas of Social Change’ by Daniel Dorling. I, along with Ed Stetzer, have an unending fascination with statistics. I am also extremely sceptical of 95% of them at least 86.3% of the time. Some of the figures quoted are mind-boggling,…
How do we help a generation damned by a lack of any work ethic?
Those of you who know me personally or have followed this blog for any length of time will know that I read a lot of books. A while back I read a book entitled, ‘Toxic Charity:How the Church Hurts Those They Help (and How to Reverse It)’. I will enclose a short review here, although…
How To Do Evangelism & Mission Through Social Media
The social media phenomenon obviously needs no introduction to those reading this blog! As with all things, there is good and bad and it can be twisted and perverted for nefarious means (love that word – thought I’d slip it in for Christmas :)). Being a good old missionary I, of course,…
Don’t work in schemes if you can’t use your brain!
By Andy Constable Biblical thinking can very often be in short supply among many young Christians who want to work in ‘poorer’ areas. They can be guilty of explicitly reasoning that ‘thinking’ is somehow unspiritual or implicitly believing that the people they are working with only need…
Youth Groups That Do What They Say On The Tin!
In the UK, there’s a product called Ronseal. It’s a popular varnish/wood stain product available in most hardware stores. Their advertising strap line is really well known: it’s supposed to be simple, straight-forward, and down-to-earth. “Ronseal: It does exactly what it says on the tin.” In…
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…