||Book Summary|| This book offers a short and sobering analysis of churches that have “died” and offers instructive advice on remedying the decline and realistic hope that a church can flourish again.
church community
||Pastoral Passage|| The experience of church as a family and a community helps inquirers come to a commitment to Jesus, and it helps followers of Jesus grow strong and stable in the faith they have committed to.
||Book Summary|| This book is a work historical fiction. It purports to be a collection of ancient letters recently discovered, translated and published for the reading public. Through this fictional collection of letters, a story emerges which provides an imaginative reconstruction of church and daily life for people of the NT era as well as the impact that can be made by the story of Jesus.
||Pastoral Passage|| What role do local church fellowships play for Bible colleges and seminaries like Laidlaw College?
||Pastoral Passage|| To form and develop disciples of Jesus, practices that are prescribed, tangible, and theologically-imbued must surely have a valuable role to play.
||Pastoral Passage|| The answers to this question find many parallels when it is asked regarding church gatherings
||Article|| Christians (and others) who ultimately refuse to get vaccinated and acquire a vaccine-passport face being made maligned and marginalised members of New Zealand for the foreseeable future. Whatever their rationale, they will not be doing it lightly, and it is not the role of vaccinated Christians to make life harder for them.
New Zealand appears to have dodged a bullet and gotten off lightly in this pandemic, yet many Christians are berating the government because we cannot gather as churches under Lockdown Level 2. But there is a high cost which I doubt we are counting.
||Short Article|| Live-streamed video conferencing is not too far from the ‘face to face’ of 2 John 12, but it cannot make up the full experience of gathered fellowship. The time will come when we may reopen the doors of our churches and sit again on each other’s couches.
Last weekend four of our young men were baptised at our church camp. What follows are the questions that were asked, with some comments the significance they carry.
Chris Northcott 