Learning
Webinar: Beyond the Billboard
Sally Mann and Alan Roxburgh lead this conversation which keeps a hopeful focus on what God is doing Beyond the Billboard. The billboard is a manufactured thing, a commodity, and it may mask a beautiful view beyond. Sally and Alan wonder if we have tended to treat our churches and our faith as a kind of billboard. There are brands and programmes and ideas, but...
Books in conversation: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy and the book of Acts
It's a serendipitous experience to read books across different genres and make connections that stretch you. Two books by Edward Luce have done this for me recently: Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012) and The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Little, Brown Book Group, 2017). These books articulate a concern about the crisis of Western democracy apparent in many books and articles. While reading these I was also reading C Kavin Rowe’s’ The World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (OUP, 2009) which made some connections which go beyond the familiar frameworks of the twentieth century.
Outside the Walls and Beyond the Billboard
Of greatest encouragement is appreciating the extent to which, while often in less celebrated settings, outside of formal structures and among unlikely people, God is at work. The most compelling picture that came to my mind at the 2017 Think Tank was that of a dilapidated billboard with a beautiful view beyond...
A Disruptive Spirit and a Strange Encounter
The story is familiar. A man of Macedonia called Paul and his companions to come over to Europe and help them. Paul had set off on what should have been a fairly straightforward journey, revisiting small communities of Christians. The purpose was to encourage, teach, establish common structures and, where appropriate, to continue to form new communities across Asia. With no explanation Luke tells his readers that the Spirit (of Jesus) prevented them from carrying out these plans. Nothing worked according their expectations...