Sacred Agents #101: My kids tell me that I have a ‘joke voice’, even when I think I’m being dead-pan. But it helps them to totally tune out, laugh politely when I stop talking, and get on with their lives. It would be wrong of me to use my joke voice to alert them to the fire and their need to escape.
Sacred Agents #100: The huge benefits of doing mission together. “If we want people to see Christ, we should show them the body of Christ. Of all the ways that we manage to stuff up the mission God has given us, surely taking it on as an individual rather than team event is the most hapless…”
Sacred Agents #99: Typically churches use the term vision to describe the bigger and future direction for a church. But I think vocation is better. It asks the question “What is God’s vision for this church?” “What has he put us here and called us together for?” It helps in several ways:
Book by Andrew Turner: What is real success for a church? What are we aiming for?
If it’s all about size and health, then why did Jesus curse that big, healthy-looking fig tree? Could it be that we are aiming to shape churches that will impress everyone but him? What does a truly fruitful church look like?
Fruitful Church exposes how, ironically, the typical aims of growth and health actually choke real life from churches. It explores an alternative vision that refreshes every aspect of local church life and compels it to awaken from static religious institution towards the dynamic missional movement that God first planted.
Crossover Recommends: Jesus the Game Changer – Series 2: To the Ends of the Earth. 13 episodes hosted by Karl Faase. Follow along as Karl speaks to over 50 guests around the world about how and why the gospel spread to become a truly global faith. Be inspired by stories of faith and courage of those who went to the ends of the earth, and consider what it looks like now to take the gospel from everywhere, to everywhere.
PRAC Spring 2020: This edition looks at how Baptist churches have responded to the challenges and opportunities of Covid-19. It includes stories of how churches have created virtual online church, built new online congregations, reached out to neighbourhoods meeting needs, changed the structure of their church, and how churches have grown in their digital capability.
PRAC Winter 2020: The opportunities for Christians and churches in chaplaincy. We feature both formal, professional chaplaincy roles as well as voluntary roles. We hear from Baptists around Australia engaged in chaplaincy from the beach to prisons, from the high seas to the high street.
PRAC Spring 2019: A selection of stories of evangelism in action. The key article by Kiran Skariah was stimulated by his contribution to the 2019 Emerge Evangelism Conference. The other articles are stories about passions, or hobbies, being used to work alongside the local church and help people connect in, or churches connect out, into the local community.
Sacred Agents #102: Finding the balance between absenting ourselves from what God is doing and projecting ourselves all over it.