Author Archives: citizenofnomeancity
Can’t Believe You Think That
Conferences, conversations, posts and phone calls. I attended a major international evangelical conference a couple of years ago at which there was a Q &A panel session with three of the leading speakers. The questions generally were on what constitutes an evangelical. I asked the panel to comment on why some bodies were making a […]
This Week I’m Supporting Manchester United
No you didn’t misread that – and there’s no punch line. On Wednesday night when Manchester United face Sunderland hoping to overturn a 2-1 first-leg defeat in order to reach the League Cup final, I will be cheering for them as loud as any of my ‘usually-extremely-vocal-but-recently-very-quiet’ United-supporting friends. Just last weekend Man United played […]
QUIZ number 2
Here is the second quiz in aid of the team going to work with an amazing project in the slums of Delhi (www.asha-india.org) As with Quiz 1, please give a donation of £/€ 1 or more at http://www.givengain.com/activist/108220/projects/6817/ One word added to each set of three makes a new word or phrase. Example: Eye, Ache, […]
A COUPLE OF QUIZZES
Gwen is leading a team to work with Asha in the slums of Delhi (www.asha-india.org) Here is an opportunity for you to help the team We have composed a couple of Fireside Quizzes to shorten the holidays. Please give a donation of £/€ 1 or more at http://www.givengain.com/activist/108220/projects/6817/ FIRESIDE QUIZ NUMBER ONE The […]
Part XXV: Is creative planting possible within Irish Presbyterian structures?
Due to the complex and troubled history of Ireland, denominational labels can carry negative connotations, so that any move by the PCI to become truly missional and break new ground in terms of planting is not only going to have to deal with issues of self-identity, but also issues of perception from within the majority […]
Part XXIV: Presbyterian Church Planting in Ireland
The PCI, like all denominations, was originally a plant. Irish Presbyterian church historian Finlay Holmes notes that the PCI is essentially an immigrant church, albeit one that is 370 years old. Its first Presbytery and fledgling congregations in the early 1640s were organized to minister to immigrant Scots. This continued into the early eighteenth century, […]
Part XXIII: Do Denominations have a future?
A number of writers (Mannoia, Murray, Stetzer, Roxburgh, van Gelder) have recognized that denominations have a role to play in church renewal and planting, but that the challenges faced are different and often more complex than those faced in independent planting movements. Yet Stuart Murray reminds his readers: “Most denominations started as church-planting movements, even […]
Part XXII: “Called to Ministry”: have the reformed churches muddied the waters?
One key element to this discussion is the place of one’s call to pastor, lead, plant, or preach and teach in the context of one’s wider calling as a Christian. Some of the opposition to bivocational ministry may arise from the conviction, however poorly articulated, that a calling to church ministry is a higher and […]
Part XXI: Bivocational planting: two more voices, Fitch & Ryan
One recent advocate of bivocational planting has been planter, author, missional-church advocate, and blogger David Fitch. On his Reclaiming the Mission site in 2011, he published an article entitled “Stop funding church plants and start funding missionaries: a plea to denominations.” Referring to the three to four hundred thousand dollars required to plant under […]
Part XX: Bivocational Planting: this side of the Atlantic – why not??
On this side of the Atlantic, Scottish Presbyterian minister and missiologist Peter Neilson has published an important series of lectures on the future of the church in Scotland, which is not without relevance to the Irish Presbyterian context. In it he coins the phrase “portfolio ministry” to describe tentmaking, giving some urban examples of it […]
