A Wales based blog exploring post-Christendom and emerging church

No change in Week 5 - still waiting for those chicks to appear!

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Paul's Gospel

Posted by Dyfed on Friday, May 18, 2012 In : Bible

We refer to him as the apostle to the Gentiles (I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want a capital 'A' there) and yet isn't it odd how little of Paul's gospel preaching to the Gentiles is actually recorded in the book of Acts. Depending on your view of how the Bible was inspired you would have thought that the Holy Spirit would have prompted Luke to give us a lot more examples of how it's done.

Good news to the Jews

That's not to say that we don't have any examples of Paul's preaching in Acts; we do. B...

A Revival Centre

Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 In : Revival

Last Wednesday I posted the first in a series on revival. I was a little fearful since I know many of my readers (like myself) are within the charismatic stream which has highly valued revivals within church history and for a period put a lot of effort into praying for a fresh outpouring. The response to that post surprised me; it would seem that many are asking similar questions themselves. So let's plough on.

Growth

Though far too early to properly evaluate the revival experienced in Pensacol...

An Educated Ministry

Posted by Dyfed on Monday, May 14, 2012 In : Pagan influences

Maybe one of the toughest chapters for me to review in Pagan Christianity is the one on educating church leaders. As someone who has three degrees in theology I am almost bound to find fault in what they say. Let me make two points straight off, therefore, and you can judge whether I have been prejudicial or not.

Critique

To begin with it is odd to find such a strong argument against a higher or university education in theology within a book that is so well researched itself. Viola and Barna ha...

Paul on Adam and Eve

Posted by Dyfed on Friday, May 11, 2012 In : Bible

So we've been looking at Paul and how he writes about Adam and Jesus, sin and salvation. If you read last week's post you will know that I've been making some general points before coming to Romans 5. What I'm trying to do (in case you're here for the first time) is to show that it isn't necessary to believe in an historic Adam and Eve just because Paul draws a parallel between them and Jesus.

Who fell?

But we've just hit one little point that needs to be touched upon already. Paul doesn't dr...

The Pensacola Outpouring

Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 In : Revival

Is it inevitable that a once powerful revival turns into dust? As a trained Welsh revival historian I could make a pretty good case for saying so. Acrimony between leaders, false claims, wise counsel ignored, and final disappointment - all characteristics of revivals in the past, not that you usually read of these things in books published after the event.

There, only the undoubtedly positive side of revivals is recorded. After all there are plenty of good things to be said about these events...