Archive for the “Mission” category
The Importance of Belief: A Response to Stephen Fry
by i.burgess on April 22, 2013
I hate myself for enjoying Stephen Fry as much as I do. I am unsure I have seen him act in anything in at least a year, and even that might have been in Blackadder. I scarcely get the time these days to watch QI, yet still I have a giddy excitement come upon me [...]
Between Confession and Testimony
by i.burgess on April 8, 2013
@cephas (Pastor’s Wife) “Darling, you need to be vulnerable with them.” (Pastor) “Okay, flock: I have a pork habit. I eat too much pork.” — Benedict Atkins (@benalexatkins) April 7, 2013 Have you read The Cross And The Switchblade? It is the thrilling testimony of Nicky Cruz as he left behind a world of drugs [...]
Tree of Life Church, Watford
by i.burgess on March 18, 2013
This past Saturday (the 16th) a group of believers gathered in the Centrepoint Community Centre, down the road from the train station, to sing, pray and share a message of healing. I was invited to attend, and since it was a new church launching on my home turf I thought it might be a good [...]
The Fear of Moral Decline
by i.burgess on February 28, 2013
Parents ought to be alarmed that a school district is teaching sex education. It is a gross usurping of a parent’s responsibility and it implies an ethical instruction not determined by the parents as such. The horror of the moral deterioration of contemporary Western culture does not end here! No, it gets worse, we are [...]
John Piper: What Kind of Baptist are you?
by i.burgess on February 18, 2013
Or, why I don’t call myself a Calvinist any more. It is disturbing thing to Piper, that a man should follow a woman. It is disturbing that women should fight to defend men. It is disturbing that contemporary feminists would seek to deny nature. In Piper’s interpretation of the human psyche, he identifies some kind [...]
Stanley Hauerwas Diagnoses Evangelicalism
by i.burgess on February 6, 2013
One of the problems with Evangelicals, particularly as it’s taken the form of Church Growth, is the presumption that you get to make God up–you get to make God up, you get to make Christianity up–so its like you don’t receive it through the gifts of 2000 years that have made you possible In moving beyond [...]
In Search of the Centre of Mission
by i.burgess on January 29, 2013
A pastor in a rough council estate has received a grant from the national denominational resource to start a local football club. Young men who would usually have been seen causing trouble now have something to do with their free time, and an opportunity to gain the social and practical skills which might aid them [...]
Peter Hitchens on the Existence of God
by i.burgess on January 21, 2013
As compelling, enjoyable and emotive as Peter Hitchens’ argument here is, I would be self-deceptive if I would sign up to this argument without first taking it to task. I like how Peter puts the argument in a more existential framework–this appeals to my Kierkegaardian leanings. It is a very important question he brings up, [...]
Women and Episcopacy
by i.burgess on November 23, 2012
I am a Protestant. Clearly, some might say, because I do not attend a church which receives oversight from the Roman Catholic episcopacy. But that would make me merely a non-Catholic. When I saw Protestant, I mean that I am committed to the theological priorities of the Reformation theologians. Chiefly, for me, that of Sola [...]
