A regular Friday round-up of articles which I have found interesting / thought-provoking / challenging / amusing during the week, pointing you in the direction of some stuff you might have otherwise missed.
This week featuring inter-generational cooperation, living with enough, celtic Christianity, Jasper Fforde, and dreaming the future.
Youthwork: Releasing the Generations
. . . no generation of Christians is meant to start from scratch as they serve Christ in the world. We have to test things out for ourselves – or they remain theoretical – but we are not meant to ignore the wisdom of previous generations nor recycle their mistakes out of ignorance. Unless, of course, we want to learn for ourselves the truth of Christian writer and poet Steve Turner’s lines, ‘History repeats itself. Has to – nobody listens.’
Patheos: 10 Great Reasons to Live with Enough: A Book Excerpt
Your purpose in life isn’t to make money. It isn’t to live a comfortable lifestyle, to prepare for your retirement, or even to provide well for your family. Believe it or not, you’re designed for something far better and much more exhilarating. If you limit your life’s purpose to acquiring wealth or living comfortably, then you’ll never have enough and you’ll never be satisfied.
Christian: Iona’s John Bell on Celtic Christianity
Where people only meet to sing songs, listen to a preacher and then go away, they are doing that for which Jesus had no time.
God never gave worship to people who did not know each other. He never gave worship to people who weren’t concerned for one another. He never gave worship to people who did not have a common mission. The early church thrived because people had a common experience of Christ.
Kindle Post: Jasper Fforde Talks to Us About Wonderful Things
The first fifty or so books you read, you’re told to read: “See the Dog. His name is Bob.” Then you move on to better stories with longer words, and eventually, ones that convey meaning and emotion. This is when you’re launched into a brave new world of ideas and adventures too numerous to mention. I remember this moment vividly. I walked to the bookcase in my parents’ house and stared at the wall of books on offer. Because Dad was an economist, most were tedious to the extreme, but after some sorting I chanced across a copy of Alice in Wonderland and took it away to the sofa. It was an astonishing discovery. The book glittered with the highest lustre, and when I’d finished, I read it again, not simply because it was terrific but because I had the power to do so. I’d like to think that if a passing relative had asked me what I’d found, I would have replied, without looking up, “I have found a wonderful thing.”
Be The Light: How do we become a mission focused movement?
Baptist Union Council recently affirmed the need for change so that we may become a much more ‘mission-focused movement.’ Yet, it’s hard to be a movement when budgets and structures keep us paralysed. But we need to. We urgently must dare to believe we can become people who do mission rather than simply speculating or reminiscing about it to keep us going in hard times. We need to take action as I am deeply concerned that all this mission talk could just become rhetoric to cover up the pain of necessary cut backs. This year, imagine if we truly became a movement of mission like we have never experienced before. It’s in these hard times that, I believe, God wants to reveal more of his power and splendour, to take us further on as a Baptist family and to be people who demonstrate His Kingdom more and more. Could this be our time to actually do far greater things then we could have imagined, to change this world for Jesus?