Tag Archives: Ecclesiology
If there’s any “Church life” in twenty years’ time… what will it look like?
The Church will not be the same in 2035. What will it be like? I have great confidence that the Church will be healthy and strong in 2035, because Jesus will still be Lord. I am under no illusion, however, that it will be the same as it is today. In fact, the way church life […]
Christian Assurance, Apart From the Law: A Defence Against the Judaisers
Judaisers A ‘Judaiser’ is someone who insists that a believer in Christ must join the Covenant of Moses, which was ratified at Mt Sinai around 1300BC. The Apostle Paul was routinely persecuted by Judaisers, who were scandalised that Paul’s non-Jewish (“Gentile”) converts were not being circumcised. The Judaisers are back. There is a whole movement […]
Evangelism: A View from the Inside
A State of Being: Freedom I was reflecting, as I often do, on what the chances are that I will be able to impart my joy to others before I die. What a tragedy it would be if I, having received so indescribable a gift, should die without having shared it. May it not be so! […]
“We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses” – Hebrews 12:1
Who are the Witnesses? Aren’t all those people dead? Hebrews 12:1 assures us (the faithful), that “we are surrounded by … a great cloud of witnesses”, referring to the saints whom the whole previous chapter had been listing. But they’re all dead. What’s with that?
I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. – Jn 16:12
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. – Jn 16:13 What is Truth? An exasperated Pilate poses the question, “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38). He did so because Jesus said, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (Jn 18:37). So what is this “truth”? And why […]
We are his “hands and feet” because we are the “body of Christ”? Oops, mixed metaphors!
As a member in the “Body of Christ”, am I His “hands and feet”? I was interested to hear someone recently suggest that we Christians are the “eyes”, “hands”, “mouth”, etc. of Christ. It’s a neat metaphor which indicates our responsibility to act, perceive and speak on God’s behalf, and to that extent I have […]
Read MoreInfant Baptism: Yes, or No?
Should we Baptise infants or not? My view on Infant Baptism attracted some interesting feedback from a lecturer: “Some original and neatly articulated theological reasoning”. If I’m right, of course, it’s not “original” in the sense of being a new invention, but in the sense of being the reasoning which produced the Scriptures in the […]
Read MoreSacred Heart Catholic Church, Booval
Visiting Sacred Heart I have attended Mass at the Sacred Heart church in Booval three times, now. For someone who’s church experience is predominantly in Protestant churches, I found a few things to notice with interest. High Church I might start by saying that, although “high church” traditions such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and […]
Read MoreOne Church, Across all Time
If there is “One Church”, and there always has been only one, then surely it’s the same Church…? I stumbled across a wonderful expression of the “One Church” phenomenon in a theological textbook. I gladly receive it and add it to the wonderfully compelling image of “One Church”: we are part of the same church […]
Church Leadership: Could Jesus be right?
What is leadership in the kingdom of God? The question of leadership in church life is a hot one. The Roman Catholic view, which consists of a single hierarchy of authority governing all aspects of church life, culminating in a single figure in the Pope, is profoundly different from the cell-church/home-church model consisting of as […]
Bonhoeffer – A scholar, a gentleman, a rebel, a martyr.
What did Dietrich Bonhoeffer think he was doing? Bonhoeffer had much to say about discipleship, and was also a vocal critic of the Lutheran Church’s inaction against the Nazis. Was he just a busybody with opinions about everything? No, he had a view of discipleship that applies as much to the church as a whole, […]
Ecumenism in Roman Catholic theology: Lumen Gentium analysed for Ecumenism.
Summary – Lumen Gentium as an Ecumenical document Lumen Gentium, (“Light of Nations”, Vatican II, 1964) changed nothing in the ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was designed that way. But the whole process of Vatican II, including this document, did prove to be a catalyst for ecumenical dialogue in many ways. Again, this […]
How many churches are there?
Why are there so many denominations in the Christian faith? What’s the difference? Does it matter? I was wonderfully confronted by the living God in a little Anglican church, and came to faith. Since that time I have been quite involved in a Salvation Army church, a Churches of Christ church, a Pentecostal church, and a church that […]
The Salvation Army and the Sacraments
Is the Salvation Army a Church? Originally, no. The Salvation Army originally denied that it was a church (“we are not professing to be a church” – Catherine Booth, War Cry, 2 January 1883). It came in for criticism because for a long time it did not enter into the debates between Christian denominations concerning the “Sacraments” […]
Roman Catholic Decree on Ecumenism: “Unitatis Redintegratio”
The Roman Catholic Church… a Decree on Ecumenism… Really? In the 1960’s, the Roman Catholic church made a big effort in an attempt to begin to reverse the 400-year rift between herself and the Protestant churches, even acknowledging that there was fault on both sides. She made a range of statements demonstrating that she understood […]
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Evangelism: A Revolution
That Old Question: What really is Evangelism? I’ve posted a couple of things previously which reveal my unorthodox take on what ‘Evangelism’ actually is, but more recently the threads that I had been alluding to have been woven together in a quite remarkable way in real life. It is time to review and restate what […]
- November 13, 2013
- / Category Commentary, Corporate, Evangelism, Light of the World, Marketplace Evangelism, Reflection on Ministry
- / Posted By Kevin Bennett
- / No Comments.
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