'missional living' Tagged Posts (Page 2)
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…
Christian Youth Work : Developing Healthy Partnerships
One of the things that we notice about the young people in Niddrie is that many of them like bikes, both the pedal kind, and the motor kind. So bikes present us with a great opportunity for contact with many young people and also with other organisations working in the area. As a church, we want to…
Should the church help young people into work?
If any professional ever had a claim to the title ‘Jack of all trades’, it would surely be the church Youth Worker. What other profession can boast such diversity in roles as: counsellor, entertainer, artist, cleaner, cinematographer, people manager, taxi driver, web developer, teacher, caretaker,…
Our children in a ‘moral abyss’
A couple of weeks back, I wrote a post about our decision to invest more heavily in the children’s work at NCC. As a ‘youth’ worker, I’ve always been a bit reticent about doing children’s work – I don’t really enjoy it, though I recognise the need for it! Dr Helen Wright, head teacher of St Mary’s Calne, Wiltshire and President of the Girls’ School Association was quoted…
Is There Anybody Out There? Mez’s Updated Autobiography Available Now!
by Mike Stark “This is a compelling, gripping, heart-wrenching, you-can’t-put-it-down story of sin and grace. Read this and thank God that, as Psalm 136 says, ‘His love endures forever.’” (Mark Dever) ~ Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC The updated…
Superiority Complex? Try Service and Love
By Andy Constable There can be a temptation when coming to work in schemes to simply see the social problems that many schemes face. People from the outside see the drugs, crime, dysfunctional families and young teenage mothers. These stereotypes fuel a superiority complex where the ‘well-meaning’ Christian thinks that they are coming to release these ‘poor people’ from…
Children’s Work & Church Planting: Friends or Foes?
With independence on the horizon for NCC, we’ve been spending a lot of time as a Ministry Team thinking about our vision and direction for the future. If our church members are to be on board with our ideas, they need to know where we’re going. The leadership of the church has decided…