Archives For church

Just Church: my review

28 March, 2014 — 4 Comments

Just Church was a conference I attended last week put on by World Vision (NZ), which I promoted online here… In this post I share a few of my thoughts – not so much a comprehensive review, but more about what I’ve been left thinking about.

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To be honest, I was attracted to this event because of my friendship with the organiser: Mark Pierson – I had been to the Just Worship event he put on in 2010 and I thought if Just Church was half as good as that earlier event it would be worth my effort being there. In the promo Just Church was certainly more “World Vision” connected than the Just Worship event had been, and I did wonder if I would be pressured to sponsor a child in Africa every lunch break. This is what happened: Continue Reading…

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Cringe communication #1: Student survey tricksters

14 March, 2014 — 17 Comments

This is the start of a blog series where I will give some real-life true stories of what I call cringe communication from the church. I want your feedback: do you agree that my example is bad communication? If not why not? You can vote in the poll below.

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I believe that the way people outside the church see the church has a massive impact on their understanding and appreciation of and for the church. This then affects any possible engagement with the church and the story of the church (or using in-house speak: the gospel). All of this comes down to communication, in particular communication from particular church representatives to those outside of the church (the society in which we live). I believe we can improve the communication of the church by eliminating cringe communication. Continue Reading…

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The disconnected church: online lecture

5 March, 2014 — 2 Comments

In November 2012 I gave the Baptist Research lecture at the annual Baptist Assembly (The Gathering) which was held in Hamilton, New Zealand. The recording of this lecture has recently been put online. If you’d like to hear me give an introduction to my PhD research, click the image below to have a listen – it will take you to the Resonate website that also contains the PowerPoint from my talk.

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The Resonate website is a storehouse of mainly sermons recorded at many different churches around New Zealand. Baptist Research have a few lecture recordings on Resonate and I list them below:
Continue Reading…

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Pastors and politics

13 February, 2014 — 2 Comments

Last week I asked my Facebook friends: “Are you a signed-up member of a political party? If so why? I’m thinking about it…” There were over 70 comments which is a lot for one of my Facebook status updates. I have found the engagement interesting so share some of the ideas here.

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My initial question wasn’t intended to be about pastors and politics, but that was one of the dominant themes that emerged – probably because a lot of my Facebook friends are pastors.  A few main themes emerged, and I outline them below.

Continue Reading…

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New research shows women can make a difference.

30 January, 2014 — 15 Comments

I read an article last week in which I saw parallels with the church context so thought I would write about the same topic. The article by Olga Kahzan in The Atlantic is titled: “The Easiest Possible Way to Increase Female Speakers at Conferences.” The quick summary is: having just one woman on the organizing committee for a conference greatly increases the likelihood of women appearing at the front of the room.

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The contribution of women is a topic that concerns me because I am part of a Christian ‘movement’ that struggles with this: the New Zealand Baptist Church. This also appears to be a widespread problem for the church in general. Three points come to mind and I outline them below. Continue Reading…

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Perceptions of church

12 December, 2013 — 10 Comments

How some New Zealanders view the church

In this post I list the nine perceptions of the church discovered in my recent doctoral research titled The disconnected church. This involved qualitative research where I talked to some people who were not what I call Christianised. This means they had never had any intentional engagement with the church throughout their life. The people I talked to also defined themselves as “spiritual”.

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In previous posts I’ve attempted to get you thinking about how people outside the church see or perceive the church. In this post I start talking about what I actually found out. Continue Reading…

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Just Church

9 December, 2013 — 3 Comments

This is the first time I’ve used a blog post to promote or advertise an upcoming event. I’m planning on attending this and hope you will consider it too (if you’re able to get to Auckland, New Zealand in March 2014).

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It’s being promoted as:

A gathering at the intersection of faith, justice, worship and the arts; to inspire, model, sustain and resource Christian communities in their building for the Kingdom of God.

Continue Reading…

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See the church in someone else’s shoes

6 December, 2013 — 3 Comments

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. [Spoken by Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird“, by Harper Lee (1960)]

The quote above and the play on the saying in the heading are known for their attempt at getting us to consider understanding others: people not like me.

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If church people are serious about what some of us call “mission”, or evangelism, or simply any sensible, authentic and transparent connection with Christian spirituality and people not part of the church, we need to consider and apply the type of understand the above quote is getting us to think about. How do people outside your local church context understand the church? …understand your church? Continue Reading…

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The disconnected church

26 November, 2013 — 21 Comments

My PhD thesis has been signed off and it is now public on the university’s online scholarly commons. It is called:

The disconnected church: a critical examination of the communication of the Christian church in New Zealand.

Below is the 500 word abstract from the start of the thesis which gives a concise picture of what it’s all about. If you’re interested in reading more, you can download the entire thesis from AUT here: http://hdl.handle.net/10292/5922

Crudge-PhD-Thesis-The-Disconnected-Church Continue Reading…

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Church cafes: good or bad? Third place, Oldenburg, Host & Moot

3 October, 2013 — 17 Comments

Recently, for the first time, I realised church cafes could be a good idea. By “church cafe” I mean a cafe on a church premises that is obviously part of a church complex/campus/property/institution. Until now my experience of church cafes have given me the impression that they are either cafes for church people, or church tourists, and I have never seen the appeal or point of that since there are so many good cafes around, why does a church need one?

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Three weeks ago I went to Host cafe in London. They’ve been running for a year, so it’s early days, but I think it’s the best church cafe I’ve been to. If I had a “third place” test, Host would pass it. This is why:

Continue Reading…

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