10 Benefits from Blogging

Some of my friends ask me where I get the time to blog and why I even bother in the first place. Well blogging is not without its benefits and so I thought I’d list 10 benefits I’ve experienced over the past two years of blogging as a Christian blogger (they’re in no particular order):

1. I’ve made great Christian friends – and some of them I’ve actually got to meet in the flesh even though they live thousands of miles away from me – that’s quite something.

2. I’ve been able to clarify my thinking on a number of subjects. For example I’ve come to understand the emerging church with far more depth through blogging than if I’d simply just picked up a book.

3. I’ve discovered like minded organisations and groups to network with. My time with some of the guys from Acts29 two months ago was great and I’m hoping that together we can see a whole lot of fruit here in South Africa – this link up would never have happened if I didn’t blog.

4. I’ve been encouraged to keep on going. Reading about people doing gospel ministry on the other side of the planet is always one of my biggest encouragements in ministry.

5. I’ve enjoyed times of laughing. Ok this one is a bit of nerdy in-house thing but bloggers seem to have a peculiar sense of humour that isn’t often present in face to face conversation but is rather more unique to the blogsphere.

6. I’ve seen friends and colleagues become more internet savy. This has been one of my aims from day one in blogging, and that is to point people to the right places on the web to maximize their time online from a Christian ministry point of view.

7. I’ve been used of God to encourage people at crucial times. On more than one occasion someone has let me know that a post that I wrote really encouraged them at an important time. Praise God for that.

8. I’ve been able to negotiate the academic arena better. Interacting with the blogging world gives you access to large amounts of information but in an extremely quick amount of time. This is crucial when trying to navigate the who’s who of the Christian academic arena.

9. I’ve been able to express my feelings. What can I say I’m a Web2.0 child I have this inbuilt need for expression that I control – blogging gives me that.

10. I’ve been motivated for mission. I think this might just be the biggest way in which blogging has motivated me. Its caused me to think long and hard about mission and what I’m doing with my life.

Why not start you’re own blog and begin to enjoy some of the benefits?

Check out this interview

Adrian Warnock’s blog has an interesting interview with Rob Rufus, one of the New Covenant International team leaders, regarding the word and the spirit.

Rob Rufus makes a great comment about charasmatics and conservative evangelicals that I think has much wisdom in it. He says at the end of the interview ‘…we need to be humble and realize that evangelicals have a rich legacy that we can learn from, and I think we can enrich each other.’

Take a look at the interview.

Mission and Partnership

I had to write a joint paper on the above topic recently and my job was to have a look at something of a theological basis for partnership in mission. Here’s a bit of what I came up with:

It is helpful to outline a brief theological basis for partnership in mission from the New Testament. One disclaimer must be made: To fully understand the theological implications of mission and partnership we need to explore a theology of the doctrine of church and its role in mission. This however is beyond the scope of this paper, but any genuine, holistic attempt to place partnership and the church within the context of mission must take this into account as it will have ramifications on the nature of partnership from a theological point of view.

Theology of church and mission aside, the following examples give indication of the existence of local church partnership in the early church. These examples have been drawn from the epistles of the apostle Paul so as to avoid the prescription/description debate that occurs often when occurrences in the book of Acts are used to authorize normative acts for the church today in terms of mission.

An extremely helpful place to start is to look at Paul’s understanding of the term ‘kononia’. The term is most commonly associated with the word ‘fellowship’ however it has also often been associated with ‘partnership’ hence the New International Version’s translation of the word in Philippians 1:5. One recent speaker at the Cape Crossword Easter Convention remarked that the term ‘partnership’ is a helpful way of delineating the main idea in the book of Philippians, so frequent are the occurrences of ‘kononia’ and its cognates.

Peter O’Brien suggests that we should understand the word kononia and its cognates as expressing the idea of common participation or ‘having something in common with someone’ – he argues however that the New Testament emphasis is on ‘participation’ in ‘something’ rather than association with someone which is the emphasis on the contemporary notion of fellowship. (1993: 294).

So in Philippians 1:5 Paul gives thanks because of the Philippian church’s participation with him in the proclamation of the apostolic gospel. When consulting 4:15 of the same epistle we see that a large component of that partnership was financial. Paul picks this up again, with presumably the same church in mind when in 2 Corinthians 8:4 Paul commends the Macedonians for their generous financial partnership. This partnership was not so much with Paul but with the Jerusalem church who were the most likely recipients of the financial gift – Paul simply acted as a go-between.

One might wonder about the apostles and other traveling church planters and evangelists as to how they might have in some sense partnered with the churches. 2 Corinthians 8:19 appears to give us some insight into this. Paul speaks of a ‘brother’ who will accompany Titus and himself in their travels and visits to the Corinthians. This brother, according to Paul, was ‘praised by all the churches’ for his service to the gospel – it seems that however he traveled and worked, he did so in close relation to the local church, perhaps even under their authority. The sending off of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:1-3 is a possible correlation of this idea, where the traveling apostles are sent off under the blessing and authority of the church. In Acts 14:27 they report back to the church about their missionary initiatives.

The New Testament is clearly in support of the notion of partnership for the sake of the proclamation of the gospel. So strong is the emphasis in books like Philippians that it seems to ‘partner’ with one another for the sake of the gospel is built into the very fabric of what it means to be a Christian. A body of believers without partnership both amongst themselves and with other bodies is not a biblical body of believers. Depending upon one’s theology of the local church one might extend this then to say that the local church is designed to be in partnership, for the sake of the gospel, with other local churches, and that this is the New Testament model for the progression of mission.

See: O’BRIEN, P. T. 1993. Fellowship, Communion, Sharing in the Dictionary of Paul and his Letters. Leicester. Inter-Varsity Press.

 

The Thankless Work of Homeless Ministry

I spent this morning on the streets of Claremont in Cape Town with the homeless folk who go day to day living from hand to mouth there. It was part of U-Turn, which is a ministry to homeless people in the Claremont area which is closely tied to my church. We had a team from BISA spending a morning observing the day to day work of the street volunteers who work tirelessly to make conversational connections with this marginalized group of society in the hope of offering them a life of rehabilitation through the transforming power of the gospel in its entirety.

I was struck by just how hard the work really is. Its a completely thankless and seemingly fruitless (at times) labour. Now I don’t want to downplay the effort required and difficulties of other ministries but for today’s blog post I’d like us just to consider those who labour in this field – inner city homeless ministry. Let’s uphold them in prayer, let’s be aware of the challenges they face and, as churches, let’s encourage and support our workers with deep fellowship as much as possible.

So to David, Joe, Alun and the rest of the street crew – keep going and be encouraged that those who work for God, never ever work in vain.

Radstock Ministries

I’ve had enough ranting about disunity in the church for one day. Here’s a link to Ant Adam’s blog where he’s discussing a new ministry he’s becoming more involved in. Here’s the beauty of it: it’s all about churches partnering each other for the sake of mission – wonderful!