musings on ministry
What’s missing today is a high-quality discourse on rethinking the design and evolution of the entire system from scratch. The quality of the results produced by any system depends on the quality of awareness from which the people in the system operate. (Otto Scharmer) Since writing the first batch of posts on Missing Generations I’ve Read More …
What spiritual practices do you do? Eh? What’s a spiritual practice? I wrote in my chapter of Inside Verdict that the church isn’t very good at helping members keep the promises they make. I promised to read the Bible, to pray and to join with other believers in worship. Reading the Bible is difficult. So Read More …
I’ve been one for 20 years. It began around 1989 when I completed the Boys’ Brigade’s King George IV officer cadet training and became a BB officer. I’ve worked with young people and the adults who work with them for all of my adult life. Most of this work has been in a church context Read More …
In part one I thought about some of the sociological stuff around about generational characteristics and how they affect church. Part of the issue these generational characteristics presents is different answers to the question ‘Who are we?’. Even if each generation shares the same answer to that question the way they might express that is Read More …
This isn’t working! There, I’ve said it. I feel better already. I’ve been meaning to say it for a long time – in fact I can’t remember a time in the last 30 years when I haven’t thought it. Oh – it’s the Church I’m talking about, by the way. ‘The Emporer’s New Church’ by Read More …
Iain mentioned in a facebook response to my last post that he hadn’t yet heard me talk about partnership… I was struck by the comment because for me partnership is implicit in community engagement. When I talk about how the church needs to engage with communities of course I mean with people but I also Read More …
What if over the past 50 years an organisation had lost the majority of its members? What should it do? What should it change? The decline in membership of the church in the UK has been well documented and plenty of words have been used on diagnosing the problem but I wonder how much time Read More …