Month: April 2013

The problem Here's a familiar problem: for the last few years you've had your church small groups based around congregations. You keep on hearing about the good this does, strengthening fellowship and encouraging shared evangelistic activities. Only recently, though, something disquieting has been going on. You've heard comments and complaints: 'No one's looking after me', [...]

This is the last post in my 'big city church' series. And today I want to show you that you can't build community by trying to. Some time in the last two decades, churches started planting 5pm congregations out of their 7pm services. I hope you'll allow me to use these times symbolically, in a [...]

As I've noted earlier in this series, the city is a place of not just deep community, but also profound alienation. The sheer volume of people, as introverts have always known, doesn't make for authentic relationship on it's own. In fact, often it is a barrier to being truly human. As one philosopher has observed, [...]