The blog “Dispatches from the post-evangelical wilderness” by “Internet Monk” has an interesting series of three articles on the future of Christianity, focusing on the prediction of an Evangelical collapse.Hat-tip to Cobus of MyContemplations for the links.
You may find the articles here:
Part 1: The coming evangelical collapse.
Part 2: What will be left?
Par 3: Is it [...]
Entries from January 2009
31 January 2009
The coming Evangelical collapse?
28 January 2009
New Patriarch of Moscow. Axios!
It came as no surprise that Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad was elected as Patriarch of Moscow yesterday, after having been locum tenens since the death of the late Patriarch Alexei II.
It is also good that the new Patriarch is familiar with the Orthodox Church in South Africa. He visited South Africa two months [...]
27 January 2009
Missional tribe
In June 2008 a gorup of 50 of us had a Missional Synchroblog, where we discussed the meaning of the word “missional”, and what it means to be a missional church.
But those blog posts soon get pushed down the pile by new posts, and it’s not so easy to find them any more, and a [...]
24 January 2009
Annus mirabilis and Tempus fungus
“Tempus fungus — times are rotten” a relation wrote from Belfast, Northern Ireland in the 1970s, which back then was a bit like Gaza recently, with bombs and soldiers everywhere.
What got me thinking about that was the reverse, when we had a synaxis (clergy meeting) at the office of the Archbishop of Johannesburg and Pretoria, [...]
22 January 2009
Tshwane emerging cohort
No, its not guerilla fighters emerging from the urban jungle brandishing grenades, but a bunch of Christians of various backgrounds and traditions meeting at Greenfields Cafe in Centurion, Tshwane, to talk about the emerging church movement.
What emerged?
One of the things that emerged was that many people were not clear about what exactly the emerging church [...]
21 January 2009
Orthodoxy and orthopraxy
In a discussion on an interreligious discussion forum someone said:
I think many people conflate religion with spirituality to their own
and society’s loss.
To me religion has two components. One is all the trappings that make
a particular relgion outwardly distinct from other religions. The
other is the inner core of spiritual practices that help the
practitioner to grow spiritually.
I’m [...]
19 January 2009
Missiology discussion forum
There is a new missiological discussion forum, which is actually a revival of a very old one. It is a discussion list for teachers, practitioners, and students of missiology from all Christian perspectives.
For those who don’t know, missiology is the academic study of Christian mission, also sometimes called Mission Studies (and yes, even in universities [...]
16 January 2009
The wrath of God
A very good post by Father Stephen on the wrath of God.
For various reasons, some people are determined to make the economy of salvation to be linked with the Wrath of God. If you do not repent, then God will do thus and such… I have always considered this representation of the gospel [...]
13 January 2009
Christianity and ethnicity
“The Orthodox Church is not missionary, because its purpose is to preserve Greek culture.”
So said a parishioner of an Orthodox Church at tea after the Divine Liturgy in an Orthodox parish in Johannesburg a few years ago, and that seems to me to encapsulate the problems of “faith and ethnicity”, which is the theme of [...]
9 January 2009
Moral clarity, moral ambiguity, moral confusion
“Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.” What I find excruciating is the moral blindness of that statement.
Several people, among them Father David MacGregor (Contact Online Weblog: Moral Clarity in Gaza), have drawn my attention to this piece: Charles Krauthammer – [...]
