» 2006 » October

Here’s a book that looks promising.

From the blurb,

This is the insightful story of Hindustan Bible Institute (HBI), an institution founded in Chennai, India, to teach pastors and to foster church planting, which over time had lost its vision. This fascinating story of dismantling and re-building of the HBI program to return to its original vision, [...]

Best book on public speaking:

“The Sir Winston Method: The Five Secrets of Speaking the Language of Leadership” (James C. Humes)
Best book on change:

“Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change” (William Bridges)

Best book on manhood

“The Masculine Journey: Understanding the Six Stages of Manhood” (Robert Hicks)

Best book on spirituality:

“Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist” (John Piper)

Best [...]

Sociologist, Rodney Stark has a new book coming out on how the Christian movement conquered the Roman Empire. Here’s what one reviewer say about it:
Contemplating the rapid spread of early Christianity, Lucian the Martyr marveled in the fourth century that “almost the greater part of the world is now committed to this truth, even whole [...]

For this week’s Sunday meditation I went looking for a quote from Jacques Ellul on prayer. It was so good I didn’t know where to stop! So I’ve broken all rules about loooong posts.

Read every word. Ellul was a great scholar but these are not scholarly words. They are the words of a man of [...]

The details are out for the National (US) New Church Conference in April 2007. I was there last year and I’ll be there with a band of Aussies next year.

The blurb:

Exponential: Moving Beyond Addition – It was Jesus that cast the vision for this emerging, seeker-targeted church that would soon exponentially grow to impact [...]

Here’s a letter I received back in 2002 from Rick Paynter. Rick’s day job is senior pastor of Gateway Family Church and leader of the Gateway movement. For fun he hangs out in Papua New Guinea with his mate Kiap who is fueling a church planting movement among the urban poor.

Greetings from Vada Vada PNG,

It’s [...]

Yet another article reminding us of the changing face of the global Christian movement: True colours of modern Christianity.

So why is the Emerging Church so preoccupied with the “first world”? How can that be “missional”?

Christianity moves southEmerging church

One of the reasons why Luke penned the book of Acts was to call successive and settled generations back to the challenge of world missions.

We need to be reminded that there is still a world to be won by hearing the story of how God used five students and a prayer meeting to birth a [...]

Niall Ferguson is one of the world’s most influential historians. He was in Australia earlier this year and recorded this interview on the rise of Islam and the decline of Christendom. He’s written about the crisis of Europe’s collapsing birth rate, saying that a youthful Muslim society to the South and East of the Mediterranean [...]

Prayer in the Scriptures is . . . a renunciation of human means.

It is not merely the point beyond which I could not go, the limit of my power which dissolves into impotence, but it is indeed a stripping bare, the abandonment of all human apparatus in order to place myself. . . into the [...]