Hi all, just a brief info message to apologize for the multiple postings of Lionel's latest piece on word power. We had some HTML hitches, and in fixing them, had to update the post a number of times. For reasons currently unknown, Google seems to handle this differently to other RSS feeds and reposts. We're working on ways to stop it happening in the future. But sorry for those of you who have got it multiple times. (And no, there isn't anything extra hidden away in the sixth copy, so it really isn't worth reading them all!)

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The story so far: Col Marshall and I are just about to publish a book called The Trellis and the Vine. The final chapter contains ten propositions about church life and ministry that summarize the general argument of the book. I'm running a version of these ten propositions up the flagpole to see what the Sola Panel community makes of them.

So far, we've had:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.

Proposition 3 is about the heart of disciple-making.

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I was asked recently to come preach evangelistically for a university-aged audience, and I was given the topic ‘Free for sex or living in bondage?’ I'll tell you straight up that it wasn't the easiest evangelistic talk I've ever had to prepare!

How do you say something sensible about a biblical understanding of sex, and something worthwhile about the grace and kindness of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus, in the same talk while maintaining people's interest and not speaking for too long?

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Today we're continuing the series on biblical word power. This time, we will seek to use what we have learned about the meaning of some important biblical words so that we can come to grips with a very significant story told by Jesus.

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The story so far: Col Marshall and I are just about to publish a book called The Trellis and the Vine. The final chapter contains ten propositions about church life and ministry that summarize the general argument of the book. I'm running a version of these ten propositions up the flagpole to see what the Sola Panel community makes of them.

Proposition 1 was: Our goal is to make disciples not church members.

Proposition 2 is about the inevitable drift of churches towards institutionalism.

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In our ongoing series of Saturday posts on church planting, this week's article comes from Chris Edwards, who talked about the experience of planting churches in the Adelaide Hills 2002.

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This post is the fourth in a series designed to help you to get to know and love some of the important words used in the Bible. Today we'll learn the basic meaning of the word ‘atonement’.

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I was listening to a sermon the other day, in which the preacher said, “Christianity is not about morality. It's not about right and wrong. It's about a relationship.” It's not the first time I've heard that phrase, or something like it, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I know what it's trying to say. I just can't help feeling that we've got the right argument for the wrong moment in history.

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Over the past six months or so, I've been co-authoring a book about ministry with Colin Marshall. It's been, by turns, exhilarating and infuriating, clarifying and frustrating. This is not, I should hasten to add, because Col is difficult to work with. He is in fact one of the wisest, kindest and most godly coots you could ever meet. But all big writing projects have their good days and bad days, and this one has had its share of both. Perhaps it's because the book really goes to the heart of what Christian ministry is all about, what church life is about, and (for that matter) what Matthias Media is for and why we bother to do what we do. It's a project that is close to the heart and close to the bone all at the same time.

The book is called The Trellis and the Vine: The ministry mind shift that changes everything, and it's due to be published in a few months' time. In the final chapter, we sum up the main argument of the book with ten propositions. By way of a taster, and to promote some discussion, I thought I'd run a slightly adapted version of these ten propositions up the flagpole and see what our SP readers make of them.

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So far, we've seen that T David Gordon believes (preacher) Johnny can't read and can't write. (He's made no comment on whether he can bowl or throw!) The question now is “What consequences do these failures lead to in terms of sermon content?”

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