The unique role of the twelve apostles

This continues my series on apostleship.

The twelve apostles have a unique role in salvation history. Everything we’ve surveyed in previous posts – their personal knowledge of Jesus and his teaching, his commissioning of them, their post-resurrection encounter with him, his equipping of them with the Spirit, and the miracles they were enabled to perform in his name – all point to them being Christ’s unique, authorised representatives, through whom we can come to know him – incarnate, crucified, risen, and now seated above all heavenly and earthly powers. This normative teaching has been preserved in written form in the New Testament. This is consistent with the picture of the early church listening to the apostle’s teaching in Acts 2:42. It may be also what Eph. 2:20 means when it refers to God’s united household being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

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Barfights in the public square

Everything in the public square seems to be increasingly conflicted. We seem to be operating with less and less shared values. It feels like we're less and less sure of what holds us together as a 'society.' A retreat into 'tribes' both drives this social fragmentation and is a result of it. Post-modern scepticism towards metanarratives, which has now become culturally normal, significantly contributes to this fragmentation. If we no longer believe that objective truth, independent of our individual or tribal perspectives, exists, we will no longer believe we can appeal to that objective reality as common ground for debate. All we will do is exert power to magnify ourselves and punish those who disagree with us. Because we believe that our cause is right, we will always think of ourselves as the victim of other people's aggression. Therefore, as Stephen McAlpine says, we will always think we're punching "up." We'll valorise ourselves as the ...

Wax and Wright on the definition of "mission"

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Backlog of blogs

This is ridiculous. I have a backlog of some 30 half-baked blogs that I haven't published 'coz I feel I haven't thought them out well enough yet. I'd forgotten that blogs are supposed to be timely & personal, not necessarily scholalrly and precise. I thought I'd poll my readers (helloooo - is anyone out there...?). What would you prefer: occasional serious thought-through stuff, or regular ignorant ravings? Personally, I'd prefer regular thought-through comments... but my lack of posts in October demonstrates this is unrealistic.

Multicultural Ministry Matters

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