The poor and the Church

Like every human organization the Church is constantly in danger of
corruption. As soon as power and wealth come to the Church,
manipulation, exploitation, misuse of influence, and outright
corruption are not far away. How do we prevent corruption in the
Church? The answer is clear: by focusing on the poor. The poor make the
Church faithful to its vocation. [...]

Gathering

A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were starting a little experiment with a kind of worship gathering before our regular community dinner on a Sunday evening. Well we’ve had our first two gatherings and I’m pleased to say they’ve been great. Very simple, but also quite significant I think.
The first one consisted [...]

Guys/Girls nights

We’re going to trial a guys and girls night once a month at Loam over the next little while. I know of a few other missional communities that have them and I think they could be a helpful discipleship tool for us.
We don’t have a strong culture of accountable relationships outside of the depth of [...]

Loam experiments

At Loam we’ve been chatting for a while about how we might have a worship gathering that was more inclusive while at the same time continue to meet in such a way that those in the core are nourished and challenged. There have been all kinds of thinking, many different options and ideas but we’ve [...]

Shaped by our communities

I was reading a post called Ecclesial Dreamer on the Money over at Backyard Missionary earlier today and they are having a great discussion about issues such as what makes a ‘good’ church and why churches should be counter cultural, but what really caught my eye was a comment about how our communities shape us.
Hamo [...]

Whose standards do we seek to hold each other to?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that people are at different points in their journey towards Jesus. Even people I have similar values to will make different decisions to me at times. But I have noticed a tendency for us to be frustrated when people don’t meet the standards we have for ourselves.
I [...]

Australian’s losing their religion? No kidding.

Rodney Olsen has been posting about Australian’s leaving church.
Losing my religion
Australians are walking out of churches and getting on with life without God.
Figures from last year’s census have been released today and accroding to this article from News.com.au Aussies are losing their religion.
    The figures, released today, revealed that 3,706,557 Australians – or 19 [...]

Missional Jesus 3

Continuing the Missional Jesus series from Jesus Creed.
Missional Jesus 3
With Mary and John Baptist now watching from the sideline (as it were), Jesus becomes the center stage as we work our way through the themes connected to Missional Jesus.
No better place to begin that Luke 4:16-30.
1. Missional Jesus publicly announces the centrality of himself to [...]

The order of missiology and ecclesiology

One of the key changes in my thinking over the past few years has been how I have understood missiology and ecclesiology, particularly in regards to how they should relate to each other. Of course I didn’t begin to think about them in those terms, earlier on the issue was more simply described as ‘what [...]

‘House’ and ‘church’

Kate over at Born to Kneel has written this great post about a recent night at our community here in Preston.
When we arrive at ‘church’ in a Preston lounge room on Wednesday night, the minister greets us with a kiss, passes us a hymn book and Bible, and we settle quietly in the pews to [...]