Looking at Christ

My notes from Duncan's second  seminar  at week two of the Keswick Convention. Sharply insightful and very practical. Thanks so much for this Duncan. Lord give me the grace to repent and do this. ----------------- Justification by faith – we’re all in the wrong, we’re clothed with Jesus’ righteousness - so we can take a critique, we don’t need to be defensive We don’t need a new strategy – we need repentance - acknowledge the prejudice in our hearts and cry out to God to change our hearts Narratives that we’ve been sold – e.g. middle class parenting better than working class values/parenting or this ethnicity is lazy or people with this accent are less intelligent – need to be challenged by getting to know people Take a missionary approach – rather than a colonising mentality. What are the wrappers of our Christianity that might be putting people off: Preaching – instead of alienating illustrations and assumptions we need to:  work on thinking thro...

My notes from Duncan's first seminar at week two of the Keswick Convention. Wonderful gospel framework. Powerful critique. Lord give me a the grace to receive this and repent. ----------------- Justification by faith – we’re all in the wrong, we’re clothed with Jesus’ righteousness, so we can admit we are wrong False gospel: “Becoming a Christian is converting to middle class culture” False discipleship: “Better yourself but stay in your lane”, “Majority culture disciples minority culture (not vice versa)” 1 Cor. 1:26-31  Not many were wise by human standards Not many were influential Not many were of noble birth But God chose… to nullify… so that no one may boast – gospel is subversive, nullifies pride and idol of class We need to help each other find our primary identity in Christ rather than to boast in our culture (which is what comes naturally) Jesus’ mission statement: preach good news to the poor (Isaiah 61, Luke 4, Matt 18 cf. Gal. 2:10) 'Pre...

David Kim of London City Mission shares some of his research showing why any strategy for church planting in London needs to take into account the rising demographic, economic and missionary power of Asia and Africa. People power and urban dominance “According to the  World Heritage Centre , by 2020 the urban population of Asia will be around 2.5 billion, having doubled in twenty-five years. By then more than half of the urban areas of the planet will be in Asia, and those urban areas alone will contain over one-third of the world’s population. The same organization predicts that the cities of Asia will be growing twice as fast as cities in the rest of the world.” ( Glen Smith, Lausanne ) Just as striking are the figures on Africa which is the world's second largest and second most-populous continent: 1.2 billion people and 54 countries. Africa's average population is the youngest amongst all the continents (with advantages of quicker learning and greater cultural adaptab...

Another great piece from Zim Okoli:  What I want us to see is that, planting churches is absolutely central to obeying the great commission. Now let me be clear. I’m not saying church planting is the only way to obey the Great Commission. For instance, one implication of the Great Commission is evangelism. Many Christians are committed to evangelism without being involved in church planting. Rather what I want us to see is that it's pretty hard to find a more fitting, more all-encompassing way to obey the Great Commission than planting churches . Going means mission by the church   Therefore go and make disciples… (Matt. 28:19) From the outset, Jesus’ intention is for his followers to be outreach-focused not inward-looking. Jesus is saying, Make disciples by going out on mission to the lost.   He already gave his disciples a taster of this back in Matthew 10. Back then he sent them out to preach the gospel to Jews, saying to them, “ As you go , proclaim this...

Zim Okoli leads New Life Catford  with  Remi Adedire. Here Zim brings to bear research on the history of the Nigerian church on the issue of contextualisation.    “To over-contextualize means you can make an idol out of their culture, but to under-contextualize means you can make an idol out of the culture you come from.” (Tim Keller, interview 2010) What does it mean for a church to be rightly contextualised? What does it mean to have a ‘native church’? A Lithuanian church that is rightly Lithuanian? A church for Catford which is appropriate to Catford? Two indigenous missionaries of the 19th and 20th century, Sam uel Crowther and Garrick Braide, pioneers of early evangelicalism in Nigeria, represent different ways to go about contextualisation and helpful ways into answering the question of what does it mean to establish a church which is both biblical and culturally appropriate? Samuel Ajayi Crowther is a great figure in the history of evangelical m...

Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. We need to have a rich biblical understanding of a ‘dying church’. Because it’s not obvious. The church in Sardis didn’t look like a dying church. But it was spiritually comatose  and on the verge of flat-lining. Jesus’ diagnoses of the churches in Revelation 2-3 challenge our definition of a ‘strong church’. Jesus says you can have good doctrine and good attendance and a good bank balance and be a weak church but you can be a small, suffering fellowship and be strong. We need to have a rich biblical understanding of church death. As with so many things it is complex, there are lots of factors involved (planning, demographics, Satan…) but it may be that the Lord Jesus is actively removing the lampstand in judgment or passively allowing a spiritually atrophying church to wither away. At the very least we need to face up to the fact that churches do die. Very...