Too many people find their experience as Christians incomplete and unsatisfactory...
Jamal enjoys his voluntary work with down-and-outs but finds church irrelevant.
Jack believes he's going to heaven but isn't sure what difference Jesus makes to him now.
Aimee loves being part of a lively church but at work no-one would know she was a Christian.
They're all missing something. But life with Jesus is meant to be an all-encompassing adventure. In this dynamic and punchy book Chick Yuill explores the four concentric circles that make up the authentic Christian life:
walking in the company of Jesus
growing in the community of believers
engaging with the culture of the times
looking to the coming of the King
Moving in the Right Circles is published by IVP in January, 2011. Read the prologue here... or order a copy here...
Tracy was recently asked to write an article for the CPAS Church Leadership magazine and they have given us permission to reproduce the article here. CL73 p6-7
LICC has been asked to contribute a series of articles to the Baptist Times exploring themes in whole-life discipleship. In the first of the series Mark Greene looks at a surprising example of faith in action on the Frontline...
Where you are, as in heaven? Imagine you are a ten year old in a primary school, specifically at Holy Trinity C of E Primary School in Northwood where I live. Imagine that your whole school is going to be discussing what its values should be and voting for them. Now, although the school is a Church of England school there are lots of Muslims and Hindus and people with no particular faith at all.
How in a multicultural context can you inject some overtly Christian component without imposing on others in your community who don’t share that faith perspective?
How do you influence corporate culture – when you are ten years old?
So you get together with two or three other Christians and you think about it and pray about it. And you summon up your courage and you go to the head teacher and say “We think one of our values should be, ‘What would Jesus do.’” And so the head talks to the Muslims. And they don’t mind because for them Jesus is a prophet and she talks to the Hindus and they decide that it’s Ok because after all this is a Christian school. And then the whole school votes and it’s agree that WWJD should become one of the school’s values, one of the criteria by which everything that happens in that school should be evaluated… And they are 10 years old.
Was it easier, I wonder, or more difficult for Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Babylon to make an impact on their bit of God’s world? Is it easier or more difficult for you or me in our workplaces, clubs, towns, villages? Or have you or I perhaps already done it?
Is this too small a tale to tell, I wonder, of how the life of Jesus so courses through a ten year old that they want to see his name high and lifted up… as indeed it then was, for all to see, on a paper elephant head on the walls of their school hall?
Those children understood something very simple. This was the place that God had put them, these were the people he’d placed them amongst, this was the place to bring his love. This was where his name was to be hallowed, this was where his will should be done, this was where his kingdom should come…
The question for us is this: can we too discover the radical possibility of the authentic, adventurous, awe-inspired, agape fuelled ordinary Christian life? In a time when evangelical Christians across the denominations are struggling to see how the Gospel of the crucified and risen Lord really makes a difference in everyday life, can we, like these schoolchildren, be clear on our calling in the places we are called to live and work?
We think that Christians can. In this series we’ll be telling you more stories about what happens when people realise that they are called to make a difference where they are; we’ll be exploring the kind of church that inspires and trains people like this and the kind of full-orbed biblical understanding of God that shapes, inspires and sustains such actions. Indeed, this vision springs directly from the Gospel, from an understanding that Jesus is creator of all, owner of all, reconciler of all, Lord of all and that therefore there is no aspect of our being, no context we find ourselves in, no task we undertake that is not of interest to him. So the new life we have in him is intended to flow out beyond our Sunday services and our midweek meetings into the whole of life, the whole of our ordinary life - our life at work, our life at home and our life in the neighbourhood, our life in the playground and our life in the classroom.
May the Lord indeed be with you this week wherever you are.
Keen to explore whole-life discipleship? On this blog, the LICC Imagine team explore trends in thinking, theology and resources that contribute to that task. Find out more about the blog here...
