Saturday 31 July, 2010

.blogs

Lagging behind

Posted: Jul 16, 2008 by Matt

We’ve now finished our Ask Anything series now and I’ve been a little slow in posting the remaining book recommendations, so here they are. Just before Harby, Chris Hodder (a Chaplain at the Uni) came to speak on the question: Why does God allow suffering? Here are his book recommendations:

Ask Anything: Suffering

• Lewis, C. S. – The Problem of Pain, Harper Collins, London, 1940 (1977). Classic, fairly simple read, but thorough.

• Moltmann, Jürgen – The Crucified God, SCM Press, London, 1974. Theology focussed on the cross, hard work, but rewarding, and a classic

• Weil, Simone – Waiting for God, Collins, London, 1950 (1974). For the more philosphical amongst you, but not for the faint hearted.

Ask Anything: Sabbath

When we got back from Harby we then looked at the question: "I have never understood the concept of ‘sabbath rest’. I realise we live under the new covenant but God rested when the world was perfect. Should we take off a day to rest and worship God? How does this fit with Jesus being the sabbath rest?". Here are some good book recommendations from that if you’d like to read more.

• God’s Big Picture – Vaughan Roberts (IVP). A great book explaining how the Bible points to Jesus and how he’s the key to understanding everything in it.

• Surprised by Hope – Tom Wright (SPCK). If you want to read more about the resurrection and how the resurrection means a restoration of this world rather than a separate ‘heaven’, this is a great place to start.

• The busy Christians guide to busyness – Tim Chester (IVP). A good book for understanding how live life based on the rest we have in Christ.

Evangelism series

Also, hot on the heels of the Ask Anything series we’re starting a new series looking at what the Bible says about the subject of evangelism. We’ve tried to create a series that looks at all of the different facets there are to the subject of evangelism in the Bible. This series takes us through to the autumn term when we’re hopefully going to be looking at an Old Testament Bible book. The topics are:

Sunday 20 July Good news for our world (Mt 28:16-20) – Clive Barker. World mission is a good place to start our series, realising that the gospel is for every nation, tribe and tongue. The passage tells us to go into all the world and make disciples of every nation.

Sunday 27 July Good news that divides (1 Cor 1:18-31) – Eddie Neat. We miss something about evangelism if we don’t see how people respond to the gospel. If we understand how the gospel is received then we won’t be as disappointed when people don’t accept it. It’s also worth reminding ourselves that people reject the gospel rather than us. Even though people say that they reject the gospel because of Christians, at the heart they reject it because of the message if it’s presented faithfully.

Sunday 3 August Good news for our culture (Matt 5:13-16) – Kieran Prescott. Jesus talks about being salt (preservative) and light (exposing evil) and being a city on a hill (counter culture). How is the gospel good news for the society that we live in.

Sunday 10 August Good news that attracts (Acts 2:42-47) – Tim Bailie. As well as dividing people, the gospel also attracts people. Living out the gospel is attractive to many because if we live as a community of God’s people it’s quite radical. In an individualistic world, genuine community is a very powerful witness.

Sunday 17 August Good news for our neighbour (1 Peter 3:15) – James Lindsey. The good news isn’t good news unless it’s good news for individuals first. Peter says that we should always be ready to give a reason for the hope within us.

Sunday 24 August Good news that changes lives (Eph 4:17-32) – Joseph Bailie. We often see the good news as just being about becoming a Christian (getting over the line) but the Bible says that there’s far more to it than that. The gospel is about God’s new kingdom being built here on earth. God saves us for a purpose – to be like Jesus.

Sunday 31 August Good news for our city (Jeremiah 29:1-14) – Alasdair Kay. This talk is about the good news and our city. God tells the children of Israel through Jeremiah to pray for the prosperity of the city in which they’re being held captive. If the city prospers, they prosper.

Website

Finally, we’ve been busy making some improvements to the website recently. The podcast archive has been re-designed, so that it’s easier to find and download older talks and the homepage now feeds back the next event coming up at church.