Down-under round-up: 22 July 2015

Issue of the week

My corner of the internet lit up with the US story of a major abortion provider’s (apparently legal) sale of body parts from aborted infants. Al Mohler’s reflection is a good place to start for Christians who want to understand the issue: ‘“A lot of people want intact hearts these days”—Planned Parenthood, abortion, and the conscience of a nation’.

Making disciples of Jesus

Gary Millar touched a nerve in his article ‘Church planting that kills the church’.

His observation is that “evangelism has slipped down our agenda”. His thesis is that church planting seems to have “taken up the headspace that was once occupied by evangelism”. Gary is convinced we ought to plant churches. But he’s worried they can too often default to relying on transfer growth in the struggle to survive and grow.

But evangelism has often slipped off the agenda in established churches too, which also rely massively on transfer growth. And correlation with the trend towards church planting does not establish causation in the increasing lack of evangelism.

Geneva Push provides audio of an interview with Ruth Powell of NCLS (National Church Life Survey), which shows church plants tend to do better than established churches on a number of measures of vitality:

• willing and effective faith-sharing (51% v. 40%)
• intentional and welcoming inclusion (17% v. 11%)
• more newcomers (17% v. 8%).

I agree church planting often does much good. We've had a go from St Michael’s Cathedral with Coniston Anglican (in a more working-class suburb).

I agree it’s best to focus broadly on multi-factorial reasons for evangelism slipping off the agenda rather than focusing narrowly on church planting.

But… I still think there’s something in the hunch that the sending church’s members can be tempted to relax: “Good, we've done our bit for evangelism in enabling this church plant” (all the while relying on transfers for re-growth). And the church plant, in the struggle to survive, can drift towards grasping at transfer growth. That's a real issue Gary raises, I reckon, at least in some cases.

Simone Richardson begins sharing what promises to be a good series of short new prayers she’s written:

• ‘Prayer of the tempted’
• ‘Prayer of the wayward’

I could imagine importing these into PrayerMate for personal use on a rotating basis, or pluralizing them for use in leading prayers at your church or small group.

‘7 gospel-centered principles for protecting your marriage’: I’m not quite sure why they used the buzz phrase ‘gospel-centred’ in the headline. Jim Newheiser’s article does not connect many of the points explicitly to the lordship or saviourhood of Christ. Indeed, the article could be strengthened by more thought on how Christ’s love for the church his bride might deepen our understanding of the points he makes.

Nevertheless, I found his seven points a really good little checklist!

1. Do not take each other for granted
2. Make your personal walk with the Lord a priority
3. Remain involved in a strong church
4. Quickly and completely resolve conflicts
5. Be honest with each other
6. Be circumspect in your dealings with the other sex
7. Be gracious to each other

Image of the week

This Spurgeon quote provided a great intro to my sermon last Sunday night.