How did you learn how to do 'Christian'?

In a recent mentoring meeting with someone, the conversation moved to how we learn how to do 'Christian' as a way of life. How do we learn Christian spirituality, behaviour, cultural norms, prayer, habits of church attendance, singing, speech, etc. etc. etc. etc.?  How did you?

The theological answer, depending on your inclination, is something like 'from church tradition' or 'from the Bible'. The practical answer is often 'from your mentors and peers'. Prayer, for example, is more often 'caught' than 'taught' - we imitate forms and fashions of prayer, rather than practice what we might read in a textbook.

That's why it's one thing to say that prayer is important and ought to happen and even preach it - and quite another to model prayerfulness and to model Scripture-soaked, wise, discerning, effective, humble, entreating, God-glorifying, Christ-centred, Spirit-impassioned prayer.

That's also why it's important to be formed both by the Scriptures and by Scripture-soaked exemplars.

What's true of the school of prayer, is true of the school of Christian living. We learn from the Bible, but we are also formed by the Christians around us. You can't have one without the other.  And both are less than fully effective without the other. So I hope that those of us who are doing 'Christian' have this double commitment in our hearts and minds: to God's Word and God's people.

Surprising Insights from the Unchurched - Introduction

I'm going to offer potted summaries of each chapter as I go along. The point is to present the book as it is, and save my comments and reflections for the end. 


In the Introduction Rainer outlines the parameters of the  research project, which I began to describe in the post below, and provides a high-level summary of findings.  This is the key chart: What factors led you to choose this church?  The percentages are of the total pool of 353 formerly unchurched who were surveyed. 

Pastor/ preaching	___________________________________90%
Doctrines	_________________________________88%
Friendliness of members	________________49%
Other issues	_____________42%
Someone from the church witnessed to me	____________41%
Family member attends	__________38%
Sense God’s presence/ atmosphere of the church	_________37%

Rainer says, "This simple graph alone could speak volumes to a strategy for reaching the unchurched". 


In fact, the study revealed that pastors, preaching and doctrine were such a significant factor that the project went on to interview 101 pastors of evangelistically effective churches.  The entire latter half of the book is devoted to describing these results.  A group of the same number of pastors from 'comparison churches', that is churches that did not meet the criteria of 'evangelistically effective', were also interviewed.  


In a similar vein, a comparison group of 'transfer churched' were also interviewed. These were people who had joined a church, not because of conversion, but from another church.  

I like the methodological premise of the study. It seems to me that to better understand the reasons why people have actually chosen to join is a very fruitful exercise.  And the comparisons with 'transfer churched' and pastors of 'comparison churches' should be extremely interesting.  


At least one person has asked me where they can get this book. If you click on the title above, it will take you to www.bookdepository.co.uk which I'm a fan of: free delivery worldwide, very competitive prices, often the same or better than our local retailers.  

Surprising Insights from the Unchurched

I'm currently at home afflicted by a viral bug of some sort, and it's been a good time to catch up with reading, so thanks Dazzur for the loan of this excellent, and for me, un-put-down-able book.

Thom Rainer was founding Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and church Growth at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the US.  He's written interesting and important books on the theme of evangelism & mission - and especially on reaching the unchurched.

This is a simple, but far from simplistic book.  It arises from a series of 353 exhaustive interviews with the recently and formerly unchurched: that is, people who have recently joined the church. Rather than asking what the currently  unchurched think, Rainer samples the opinions of those who have made a recent and successful transition into church membership.

This small methodological tweak yields big results.  So instead of reading another book that gets angry at the church for not reaching group X, Y or Z, I'm reading a book that's about what's happened so that an unchurched person has now become a Christian and committed church member.

I'm already more than half way through the book, but will post reflections as I get to them.  If you'd like to read with me, please get a copy and do so.  I'd love to hear what you think and how we can implement some of these insights in our life together at St Alfs.  (Actually, we've already started to do so through our Mission Action Plan process, but that's another story...)

Daily Bible Reading

I've been asked three or four times in the last two weeks about daily Bible reading, how to hear God speaking through the Scriptures, and resources for regular Bible reading.  Here's a one-stop-shop website that has a lot going for it.  http://bible.org/

It has a Daily Reading Plan that you can bookmark and access daily: http://net.bible.org/daily.php and heaps of other resources, including one on women's mentoring which I found quite helpful.

Among its contributors is Darrell Bock, who has written probably the best commentary on Luke's Gospel available today.  It's a two volume monster!  The very model of clear exegesis and application.

Another favourite resource is Don Carson's For the Love of God. It's gone to three volumes, and there's probably a fourth coming soon!  But you can get it FREE from another great web resource: The Gospel Coalition.  You can subscribe to the blog feed via RSS or email, so you can get it emailed to your portable email communications device every morning and read, mark and learn on your way to work.

Happy daily Bible reading!

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

What does God think of the BP oil spill?

Christianity Today is a magazine founded by, among others, Billy Graham and Carl Henry in the middle of the twentieth century - just as the evangelical Christianity was beginning its resurgence in the UK and US.  Over the years, it has provided thoughtful and distinctly Gospel-focussed commentary on current events and church concerns.  Here's a latest offering on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It's brief and an overview rather than a sustained argument for a more robust theology of creation, but still worth noting as a conversation starter:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/mayweb-only/28-12.0.html

St Alf's folk might be familiar with Ian Hore-Lacy's excellent little book Sustainable Dominion. Ian has provided a summary here and was on ABC Radio National discussing it here. 

An important topical topic for Christians to have reasoned, biblical convictions about!

Shanghai World Expo

When I was in school, one of the values that was drilled into me was, 'If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well'.  China seems to have taken this principle to the max for this expo.

65 BILLION US dollars to showcase Shanghai and China, amazing pavillions from the host country and the UK, Netherlands and Norway - and probably many others besides - and all to be pulled down in October.

What does all this say about world poverty and world priorities?

Our churches are invisible

Thanks Dave. Here's the re-post from your link. 

Our churches are invisible

Archie Poulos
September 4th, 2009

Sydney’s streets are littered with small fridge sized dark brown rectangular boxes positioned between the footpath and the road. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They are used by postmen to store mail for distribution. It has only been in the last two years that I have noticed their existence. Up until then they were invisible to me. Now I see them everywhere. 

I wonder whether the same can be said of our churches?

Do people drive past a hundred churches and never notice them? In the past few years I have been on two Moore College Missions where we served coffee on the lawn between the church building and the footpath. On both occasions, in different regions people came up to me and said they thought that the church must be closed. To them the vibrant church life present was invisible.

Possible Reasons

Why could this be the case? 

Here are some thoughts.

1. Church’s busiest time in often Sunday morning well before many people wake up, let alone leave the home. By the time they surface and enter the sunshine, church is over and the building closed.

2. The buildings have been standing longer than passer-bys have been in the area. The church building is just part of the natural geography of the suburb which you take for granted and so ignore. While much change may be occurring inside the building, nothing happens to the external fabric of the building that would make a person think there is any life here or any reason to re-assess the dormant state of the church.

3. There is a generally held community sentiment that churches are a thing of the past, a belief enhanced by the fact that our buildings are often so large and the members so few.

4. For almost all of the 168 hours in a week the church doors are closed.

5. No evidence exists that the church has any engagement with the community. Things that are inactive soon become invisible.

What can be done? 

Here are some thoughts about what can be done. I await your thoughts too.

1. Have something prominent outside your building that changes regularly. The greatest advertising for St. Barnabas’ Broadway was the constantly changing bright sign out the front. No one would have even noticed the building if it weren’t for the sign.

2. Do communal things like morning tea outside.

3. Make a significant, visible change to the exterior of the building.

4. Individuals from church play a significant part in community life. Don’t be afraid to let the community know that you are part of the church family. Perhaps a quality church T shirt or pullover can help?

5. A group from church, properly attired can do something in the community

6. Ring the church bell (sparingly, if you have one).

7. Have welcomers to church stand outside the building, with smiles on their faces; not inside where they can’t be seen.

8. Organise for church members to ‘scoop’ for people by going outside the church grounds and inviting people to the meetings about to commence.

9. Open the doors of the church and conduct history tours.

10. Conduct non-service time meetings on site, so that people may see the building is being used.

11. Regularly provide content about people and photos for the local paper about interesting things your church is doing.

And remember, the goal in all this is not to make our buildings visible, but to connect with those around us so that the message of salvation can be shared.