Mission unfolds in our homes and backyard gardens. Mission extends across generations and welcomes new people into our families. Mission seeks the well-being and shalom of the whole city. And this day-in, day-out mission of being God’s people includes praying for the city in which we live.
— Read on www.reformedworship.org/blog/and-pray-lord-it
May God bless this faithfulness in the parish!
On Saturday, made some more progress in my S. Providence district. Hoping to get it finished before it gets too cold.
Balcom St. has a lot of history for me. It was there I met a Liberian who seemed like he was just waiting for a fisher of men to come after him. In the same building now is a refugee family of the Karen tribe from Southeast Asia. One of the young Liberians in our church had invited the daughter, a good friend of hers, to church some time back and came for a number of weeks. And a Congolese family that live next door, very dear Christian people, worshipped with us regularly for some nine months. They are living stones amid the rubble of sin and misery.
Saturday was no disappointment. Above our Congolese friends is a small Somali family. The young man, a Muslim, was very polite…
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“The commands of the law, in the hand of Christ, have lost their old covenant-form, and are full of love. The command of the law of works is, Do, and Live; but in the hand of Christ, it is, Live, and Do: the command of the law of works, is, Do, or else be damned:…
— Read on westportexperiment.com/2018/09/25/do-and-live-vs-live-and-do/
Reflections on an Experiment in Christian Community
https://felchouston.wordpress.com/2018/08/17/reflections-on-an-experiment-in-christian-community/
— Read on felchouston.wordpress.com/2018/08/17/reflections-on-an-experiment-in-christian-community/
A fantastic effort for the kingdom – a cautionary tale for some, but also a great example of spiritual entrepreneurship. It would be nice to see a cadre of missionaries dedicated to reaching Houston base there!
An interesting review on the development of social ethics, relation of the church to the state and other topics with direct connection to issues in the church today…but not your typical missiolinks article!
O’Donovans, Oliver and Joan Lockwood. Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics Past and Present. Eerdmans, 2007.
I’ve read this book more than any other book over the past eleven years. Each essays is a Master’s course in social ethics. With all the combined essays, you will know more about ethics than the average seminary graduate. This post is going to be very long, but given the contents, that is unavoidable.
The most important essay, and the one from which most others spring, is Oliver O’Donovan’s essay on Augustine’s City of God 19.4. O’Donovan is in the very dangerous waters of whether the City of Man constitutes a true res publica. And if it doesn’t, and if the Church does, does this mean that the Church is actually the only true political society? If so, we aren’t that far from Yoder. But I don’t think O’Donovan takes it in that…
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Pastoral care for new Christian converts must seek to build a solid Christian identity.
Here are 10 bases to cover from Duane Miller’s perspective.
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Photo by AMISOM Public Information – Flickr, CC0, Link Mogadishu, Somalia
I recently attended a consultation in East Africa. Our goal was to formulate a strategy for evangelizing the unreached of East Africa and the Horn Africa, almost all Muslims. This talk was my own contribution to the consultation and was well received. It is an expansion of an earlier talk I gave in November of 2017.
I begin by arguing that persecution is not the main pastoral challenge for converts, rather is the formation of a firm, new Christian identity. I found this in my own research presented in Living among the Breakage (2016), and earlier research by Kathryn Kraft (2013) and Seppo Syrjänen (1984) contain similar findings.
Here I present ten points that can be used for people counseling and guidance for Christ’s converts from Islam:
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Francis Scott Key helped promote Sunday Schools throughout the American West, helping create thousands of them over the years.
Though we’ve heard his song sung many times, most people have never heard of this aspect of his legacy.
Take a few minutes to read it for yourself…
How can we follow his example?
‘Star Spangled Banner’ author evangelized through Sunday Schools
http://renewaljournal.blog/2018/07/14/star-spangled-banner-author-evangelized-through-sunday-schools/
— Read on renewaljournal.blog/2018/07/14/star-spangled-banner-author-evangelized-through-sunday-schools/
