Author: michaelpaget

My wife is not the most amazing wife in the world. Some of you - especially those who actually know my wife, Fiona - will be appalled at what I have written. You will note that when I first came on staff at my church, members of the congregation found it hard to believe we [...]

There is a conversation that church plants and established churches need to have. It isn't happening. And this is a problem. Over three posts, I'm going to unpack some uncomfortable truths about the relationship between old and new churches, about effective resourcing of mission and about the dark side of the minister's heart. Another conversation Many Christians [...]

You might think, from the state of the current conversation around mission and church planting, that parish churches have had their day. That they are a quaint, nostalgic and ineffective legacy of comfy Christendom. But parish churches have never been more important. It is true that a great deal of evangelism naturally proceeds along lines that largely [...]

KEVIN RUDD ON Q&A On Monday night, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd fronted the ABC's Q&A panel TV show. By now, it would be hard to find a person interested in the intersection between religion and politics who is unaware of his comments. A Baptist pastor, Matt Prater, said: From what I’m hearing, most Christians I [...]

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, [...]

I am endlessly moved by this poem.Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the eleven apostles;it [...]

We're now going to turn to the reason why the longing for small church, for the sake of intimacy, is a terrible and destructive ideal. Firstly, it doesn't understand the nature of church. The church is not a community seeking to create intimacy; it is a community intimately united to Christ, and only then to [...]

If you're Christian, or exploring Christianity, and you're about to move to the inner city, you should know about a bunch of great new church plants. White Horse Church, in Pyrmont.  Resolved Church, Newtown. Vine Church, Surry Hills. And, of course, the great transformational work happening at York St and St Stephens, Newtown. (As an [...]