Steve & Mary-Anne’s Weblog

Barna describes societal trends which have an impact on how people approach faith and spirituality. In such a short space, his treatment of each trend is naturally rather superficial. He writes very succinctly, though, giving much food for thought.
“The more you can anticipate some of the transitions resulting from these trends, the greater will be your ability to help shape the world in ways that are likely to honor God and advance your spiritual maturity. This will impact your own life and the lives of others with whom you interact.” Let us take that to heart.

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In chapter 4 of ‘Revolution’, George Barna takes a look at how the church fares in fulfilling the seven passions which he has identified in Revolutionaries. According to his research, it is generally doing badly.
The chapter ends with the statement “The Revolution is about recognizing that we are not called to go to church. We are called to be the Church.” (In his terminology, ‘church’ means the local church, ‘Church’ the global body of Christ).

This was a good presentation of the general state of the traditional church, managing to both recognise its achievements in the past and clearly present a rationale for desiring change.

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In a terrible turn of events, the Steeles suddenly caved in today, deserting their convictions to attend a traditional morning service. Does this signal the beginning of the end for the house church movement in the USA?

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I’ve also started on Felicity Dale’s ‘An Army of Ordinary People’. I’ve only read the first two chapters, but it looks like being a great book already. It opens with Hank’s story. Hank is a man who used to say very little, but who dared to try starting a very simple church with some people [...]

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I’ve started reading George Barna’s upcoming book ‘Revolution’, which I picked up at the house church conference last weekend. It’s a light read, but I’ve only had time to get through to chapter 4; so far, it has been mostly introduction to the topic. I think he is painting a rather rosy picture of what [...]

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I spent the afternoon in The Garden of Our God (OK, officially called ‘of the Gods’…), taking lots of photos. It was a perfect day - blue sky, hot, with a pleasant wind.
Mike spent the day with his daughter, Sarah, at a hot rod show. They are both fans of custom cars, and Sarah took lots [...]

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The replacement part for my laptop has finally arrived, and works - my screen works again. Hewlett-Packard originally quoted me 8 days delivery for the part (which is only available in the US, so I couldn’t order it in advance!), but quoted over a month in the confirmation mail. After a sharp conversation with their ordering [...]

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Frank Viola’s book concludes with a look at the nature of apostolic authority. He makes the point that we often look at Paul (particularly) as being a very authoritarian leader. Examining his writing, however, we find appeals, arguments presented, and references to fellow workers such as Timothy and Titus as ’sons’, writing that Titus, for [...]

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Yesterday was an amazing day, meeting with people interested in simple church. The news is not yet ready to be released; all I can say is that things are really starting to move here!

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Four weeks have passed since I arrived. The time has flown! I miss my beautiful wife, but our regular conversations help to alleviate that. She is having a very interesting time back home, even if she seldom writes anything here.
Today was the first day I’ve forgotten to take a morning photo. We were all tired [...]

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