Blogs of the Week

I have not had the time to write a substantial blog of my own this week, due to the creeping amount of work that lies around my study that should get done, but there have been a number of posts from Friend's, mates, and blogs that I read often.

Mike Brantley, worker, planter and missionary with Communitas New Orleans has blogged on cultural captivity here and also given a confession of his own cultural captivity. These two blogs have a major impact on me as I am wrestling with what it means to be a christian in the culture that I live in and what it means for me as a person who will be going out into the workforce.

More on cultural captivity; Mike Zook, a mate of Mike Brantley's has written a blog on consumerism and that fact we are so caught up in it. He raises some interesting questions on how we do church in the western world and argues that it comes back to the fact that we have modelled our churches around consumer based models. Instead of following a Jewish discipleship model, where all are involved, growing, being challenged and being shaped. Instead 95% of people within western churches are passive.

On the cost of discipleship and church planting, Reid S. Monaghan, a church planter has written about what it means to be a disciple following the call of God on his life, dropping all and moving to New Jersey. For many people this is a crazy, crazy thing to do, most of us follow our career go with the flow and live in a way that doesn't shake up cultural values and norms. But following Gods call, Gods cry for us can be radical, shaking up those around us and challenging them. This can be very uncomfortable, considering one of the most important western values is comfort!

Finally, vineyard interactive pastor and Friend Matt Mansell has written a blog on one of his favourite worship songs, The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails. This continues on his discussion on the sacred vs the secular and seeing past the dualism that we have created within western Christianity.

Anyway, hope all is going well for all of you, and I hope you get some challenge out of these Ideas as much as I did.