An artist in a church decided that one way she could use her gifts was to design cards, especially ‘Thank you’ cards, for people to express their appreciation for each other. I didn’t buy any – partly because they were a bit pricey, but mostly because I thought they were a bit too over-the-top in
The business guru Peter Drucker says that the single most important characteristic of effectiveness is that we know where our time is spent. And ministry being ministry, that means a whole range of duties and tasks – including the unexpected. Into an already full week, God sends a funeral, a pile of urgent admin from
What are we here for? What is the purpose of anything and everything we do? If we’ve been paying any attention to John Piper then you’ll know the answer off the top of your head: we bring God glory. Here’s how 1 Peter puts it, and notice the two purposes: But you are a chosen
The Bible, we rightly say, is a library not one book. But unlike any other library, and unlike other religious books like the Qur’an, it has a coherent narrative from open to close. Getting to that coherence takes a little bit of work, but not much, and any Christian could be able to grasp the
You can define an organisation three ways – by its centre, which is what it holds most dear, its circumference, which is where the limits lie for what it may or may not accept, and by its cause, which is what gives it life, energy, and what it would die for. The centre for us,
Once upon a time, a man was invited to be the minister of a large, and orthodox church. They wanted someone with traditional reformed views, they said, who would preach and teach well. He was very enthusiastic. What he discovered was that by Reformed they meant, that they loved the words and ambience of the
When Jesus underlined the first and greatest commandment he added to it. ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength’ (Mk.12:30). What was implicit throughout the Old Testament, that truth and words and wisdom are aspects of God’s character and therefore of
I’m doing the all-age part of the service on Sunday, which includes teaching a memory verse. That word ‘memory’ is important – how do I move from teaching a verse, to teaching people to remember? And how do I get it out of short-term memory into long term recall? Choose a verse that can
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