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 [...]

A Scot McKnight Good Friday Reflection

As you may have noticed I think that studying the background, the context of the biblical stories that we know and love is really important. So when I stumbled across this piece by Scot McKnight I had to share.
We need to reconsider why it was that Jesus chose Passover (a night of celebrating and remembering [...]

The White Masai (beware of spoilers)

I need to preface this post by saying that if you want to watch The White Masai then don’t read this post, it’ll spoil it for you. Otherwise, read on.
Last night Jay and I watched the The White Masai which is the story of Corinne Hofmann. What struck me as we watched the film was [...]

The importance of context - Mary and Martha

I was reading some NT Wright stuff on the biblical basis for women in ministry earlier today (not because I’m particularly concerned about the issue, but because he always seems to have something interesting to say) and came across this facinating perspective on the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10.
Most of us grew [...]

Our journey with incarnational, cross-cultural mission and Forge

I came into connection with Forge after having a life changing experience on short term mission in the Middle East. Jay and I went to see what God was like in a place where most people didn’t follow him, to see if he was the same God that we knew here in Melbourne. A bit [...]

Spiritual Aerobics?

The ABC had the following article online today which I found interesting.
Young Australians attracted to ’spiritual aerobics‘A survey shows that new and emerging churches are popular with young Australians and that ‘nature religions’ and Scientology are growing strongly.
The survey was published in Professor Gary Bouma’s book, Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century.
Professor [...]

Forge Intensive Saturday - Mark Sayers

I thought I’d post up my raw notes from the intensive … totally unedited I’m afraid, so please excuse anything wrong, offensive or unintelligible.
Mark Sayers. Discipleship.
This intensive about our heart’s motivation, not only our heart’s but the heart’s of those we seek to lead.
There has been lots of reshaping of how we meet and what [...]

Crossing Cultures

Jay and I had some friends who are missionaries in Jordan come and have dinner with us last night. Hanging out with people who devote their lives to a culture so different from ours is always an interesting experience. They usually come across as being a bit weird. Fair enough though really, if they weren’t [...]

The challenge of creating community in our culture.

Possibly my last post using a quote from Emerging Churches. I was plagued by this issue at my previous church and suspect it will be an ongoing challenge, both personally and in terms of our church plant.
Creating a vital community is a challenge in our current cultural context. People are both hungry for relationships and [...]

Protestantism and Print Culture

Something else from Gibbs and Bolger’s book that I’d never thought about before …
The Protestant church itself was a contextualisation into print culture, a new form of church created for those who built their worlds around the printed page.
With the invention of the photograph in the mid-nineteenth century, the seeds of the print era’s demise [...]