What Do We Actually Need?
We need people who are self-starters, able to create new ministry opportunities and manage them well so that the work can grow. We need people who like the idea of being given freedom and flexibility to make the most of the opportunities on our doorstep. Maybe that sounds like something you would like to do. Maybe that sounds like an environment that you would enjoy. If so, maybe you can get in touch with us.
You may or may not know that our church is currently looking for a second full time worker. If you are interested, you can read the full advert here. It is fair to say, the advert somewhat divided opinion.
In part, that was because we are not particularly concerned about specific job titles. Nor, indeed, are we very concerned about narrowing down exactly what the person is going to do. We have always taken a principle of expecting people to look at what is currently going on – both in the church and more widely in the town – and ask themselves how they are going to quantitively and/or qualitatively add to the existing work. It has long been our belief that people will be far more engaged with what they are excited to be doing than what we have told them they must do.
Someone recently asked me, given this broad view, what actually prompted us to create a position? The answer to that is simple: the need. The need both in the town and in the church. We need people who will reach the lost and disciple the saved. We are quite open on the question of means of doing that, but there are 240,000 people in our borough and not a right lot of gospel ministry. Within our church, there are many people from unchurched backgrounds – and we have ongoing contact with many unbelievers – all of whom need someone to share the gospel with them and, if they know him, build them up in the Lord Jesus.
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
Randomness is Not a Scientific Explanation
Randomness can never be a scientific explanation, since we can never know that something is random. At best, saying something is random is shorthand for “we don’t know.” So, when scientists state the origin of something in our universe is random, they do not know the origin.
It is common in the sciences to claim aspects of our universe are random:
In evolution, mutations are random.
In quantum physics, the wave collapse is random.
In biology, much of the genome is random.
In business theory, organizational ecologists state new ideas are random.There is a general idea that everything new has its origins in randomness. This is because within our current philosophy of science, the two fundamental causes in our universe boil down to randomness and necessity. Since necessity never creates anything new, then by process of elimination the source of newness must be randomness. Similar to how the ancient Greeks believed the universe originated from chaos.
Read More -
Lived to Be Forgotten: Dixon E. Hoste, Missionary to China
One of the most important and striking characteristics of Hoste was his prayer life—and related to that, his true humility before God and in his ministry. Hoste never sought fame or power. Instead, he was determined that his name and reputation would be subsumed under the desire to see Jesus get all the honor for everything. Hoste “lived to be forgotten” because he chose to be “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
Dixon Edward Hoste (1861–1946) was a British missionary who served in China for over 40 years. Although he succeeded James Hudson Taylor as the general director of the China Inland Mission (CIM), much less has been written and recorded of his life and ministry than of Taylor’s.
This is not, however, because Hoste lacked achievements and contributions to the mission in China. He was instrumental to CIM’s development not only in terms of organization and mission mobilization but also in the indigenous principles that encouraged Chinese churches to self-grow and rely less on Western missionaries, as well as in dealing with the difficult Boxer Rebellion aftermath with grace and “the power of gentleness,” as former CT editor in chief David Neff put it.
One of the most important and striking characteristics of Hoste was his prayer life—and related to that, his true humility before God and in his ministry. Hoste never sought fame or power. Instead, he was determined that his name and reputation would be subsumed under the desire to see Jesus get all the honor for everything. Hoste “lived to be forgotten” because he chose to be “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
Talking to God
Dixon E. Hoste was born on July 23, 1861, four years before CIM’s founding. Both his father and his grandfather were military men. When Dixon was 17, he entered the Royal Military Academy. At 18, he received his commission as a lieutenant to serve in the Royal Artillery.
Three years later, in 1882, Dixon’s elder brother, William, invited him to attend a special meeting in Brighton where the speaker was the American evangelist D. L. Moody. Phyllis Thompson, author of D. E. Hoste: A Prince with God (the primary biographical source in this article), described the scene. When Moody prayed, Thompson wrote, Dixon felt that he “talked as though God was there, as though he knew him, as a man talks to a friend. He talked as though God could be depended upon to do his work in men’s hearts, right then and there.” Hoste was converted at the meeting. Moody’s prayer left a deep impression on him that shaped his own prayer life over the next 40 years.
It did not take long before Hoste came across Hudson Taylor’s little bookChina: Its Spiritual Need and Claims. Hoste was captured by Taylor’s call for missionaries to serve “four hundred millions of souls, ‘having no hope, and without God’” in China. Hoste wrote to the London office of the CIM in 1883 and offered himself to be a candidate.However, the reference letter from the vicar of Sandown, Isle of Wight, W. T. Storrs, was not totally encouraging. On Hoste’s application form (in the OMF International archive) Storrs praised Hoste’s Christian character, calling him “a straightforward fellow, with much love and faith.” But he also characterized Hoste as naturally shy, a little impulsive, not able to teach well, not very enterprising, and not “naturally fitted” for missionary work—with a disclaimer of “but I may be mistaken.”
Though the clergyman’s assessment wasn’t very hopeful, Thompson writes, members of the London Council took note of the spiritual stature of this quiet young man. He was clearly humble and sincere and even in his youth demonstrated balanced judgment and foresight.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Israel the Oppressor vs. Hamas the Oppressed: The Inverted World of Western Cultural Marxists (Part 2)
Significant as the combat is between Hamas and Israel, more crucial is the battle for the mind and heart of billions. This is why I have devoted such close and extensive attention to understanding and explaining the true war that is being waged between two antithetical worldviews, the biblical-Christian view and the anti-Christ view which is nonetheless religious in nature. The anti-Christ view is religious because “virtue signaling,” conspicuously exhibiting attentiveness to “politically correct” issues, especially so-called “social and racial justice,” without effecting any real change for the alleged oppressed is at its core. This anti-Christ view steals daily news headlines with reports concerning crowds of devoted protestors who subject all of human life to their ideologically reductionistic oppressor versus oppressed paradigm, identifying but never lifting the alleged victims, who advance their cause, and excoriating and demonizing the alleged victimizers whom they passionately despise.
Making Sense of Widespread Western Favoring of Hamas Against Israel
What accounts for the coalition of diverse Leftist groups rallying together for Hamas and against Israel? What binds BLM, Jewish Voices for Peace, Gays 4 Gaza, Queers 4 Palestine, Lesbians 4 Liberation, Antifa, The Squad, Abortion Activists, Green Climate Police, Democratic Socialists of America, university professors and students, and Jewish intellectuals in solidarity with Hamas to oppose Israel? Matt Walsh rightly explains, “So, this desire to promote a murderous ideology—one that, if unleashed worldwide, would kill a lot of Leftists—is not unique to the current war in the Middle East. It tells us something fundamental about how Leftists think. Specifically, it exposes how heavily they rely on abstraction, rather than practical thinking informed by real-life consequences.” For example, Megan Rapinoe, who is an outspoken advocate against Israel and a fund-raiser for children in Gaza who also claims to be married to Sue Bird, a Jewish woman with Israeli citizenship, effectively illustrates his point. How long would Rapinoe and her female sexual partner survive in the Gaza Strip?
Walsh summarizes well the reasoning that coalesces the disparate Leftist groups. They view Israelis and their allies as the current great oppressor who must be toppled.
They see Hamas fighters, like BLM rioters, as a physical manifestation of the many anti-American concepts they’ve been taught in school. These barbarians are the “de-colonizers” and the “anti-oppressors.” They are the answer to “whiteness” in all its forms. The Left will humanize its allies, like George Floyd. But they will abstract their enemies as “oppressors” and “agents of white supremacy,” and then celebrate their destruction and murder.
Has the coalition of Leftists with disparate, even conflicting, interests overreached, transgressing their own religious dogma of tolerance versus intolerance by defending the cause of Hamas terrorists as the oppressed and identifying Israelis as colonizing oppressors? One might be tempted to think they have, given (1) the inescapable appearance of anti-Semitism on the face of their cause, and (2) how many Democratic Party politicians, their surrogates, and media talking heads have not joined them even if they stand mute lest they alienate their voting base. Does endorsement of undisputed anti-Semitic Hamas as oppressed by Israeli oppressors finally expose their Marxist agenda for all the world to see? If not, why not? Their applauding Hamas, hoping to rally world opinion against Israel’s sovereign right as a nation to defend its citizens from Hamas’s terroristic attacks, exposes the moral bankruptcy of their Marxist view of and for the world.
Will the world finally wake up to the destructive ideology of “Wokeness”? One would hope, but do not count on it. Why? Because the ideology entails a religious belief system antithetical to Christianity and the Western culture it shaped. Marxism’s “long march through the institutions,” conceived by Antonio Gramsci, and later Rudi Dutschke, is deep and thorough, as Gramsci schemed: “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. . . . In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”[1]
Socialism’s ideology has been saturating Western culture for more than fifty years, deluding multiple generations of Westerners who have become its “useful idiots.”[2] From Kindergarten to University, Cultural Marxism has overwhelmed our education system with its morality and culture-destroying ideology. Known by its various innocuous sounding Orwellian iterations: “Multiculturalism,” “Diversity,” “Critical Race Theory,” “Diversity-Equity-Inclusion,” “Anti-Racism,” or simply “Wokeness,” Big Ed(ucation) has become a hotbed for Marxist ideology. Thus, since October 7, the world has been observing “Anti-Racism” in action, the divisive core principle Ibram X. Kendi candidly asserts with moral sanctimony:
If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.[3]
Given Kendi’s forthright acknowledgment that “anti-racism” is reverse-racism, it is evident that since October 7 Western Cultural Marxists believe they have taken up the righteous cause of Hamas, racist anti-Semites, whose aggressive actions seek “liberation” from their alleged racist Jewish oppressors.
Read More
Related Posts: