You’ve probably been in a bible study where the leader asks a question and there’s that awkward silence. Is the question too hard, too easy, or too badly phrased? Often it’s down to the kind of question that’s been asked. In particular, we need to know the difference between an open and a closed question.
This is what the Proclamation Trust have said, in their EMA review: “The latest BST book is a robust look at the Bible’s theology on being gathered together. This will be good for leadership teams and also thinking church members. A useful addition to your churches bookstore.” Highly commended Evangelical Ministry Assembly 2013 Details of
We’ve all been there – the cramped seat, the plastic food, the person sitting next to you whom you don’t know and don’t wish to know… I’m writing about Bible studies and comparing them to a plane flight, and the jokes seem to write themselves. But there’s a point. Passengers can doze and watch a
Giving talks, obviously. Leading bible studies, of course. Perhaps some personal work, and reading a psalm with someone in trouble. But the first and most important duty of your bible is to feed you spiritually, and keep you connected with the head, the Lord Jesus. Because if the enemy can disconnect you from him, then
From the time you leave home on Sunday morning to the time you get back, approximately a gazillion thoughts have flitted through your head. Some are trivial (because I assume your mind, like mine, occasionally wanders during a song. Shocking, I know). Some are important, but they strike you at an odd moment. And now,
One church has a full time musician on its staff. Another has to use digital recordings on a keyboard because no-one can play. One church produces full colour notice-sheets. Another uses a twenty year old duplicator. One church puts on a full scale Christmas pageant. Another can hardly scratch together a choir for the carol
Tom looked at me straight. “Well? What did you think?” We were back in his house sharing a kebab, after I’d preached at the church where he’s the pastor. It’s a good, smaller church – maybe 25 people that evening. What did I think? I told him that he was doing a great job: the
Neil Postman’s brilliant little book ‘Entertaining ourselves to death’ first alerted a generation to the dangers of trivialisation and superficiality that the popular media were forcing on us. Years on, the problem is seemingly worse. And there are consistent warnings from some of our best Christian thinkers, that as preachers tread down the path of
“It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don’t know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different
