Why and how does Jesus ‘gather’ his people?

The New Testament’s language of ‘gathering’ is interesting and theologically rich. At one level, it simply designates the bringing together of things in a physically common space;  thus Herod ‘gathers‘ all the chief priests (note the plural!) and teachers of the law to learn from them where the Messiah was to be born in Matt …

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What do we do when we worship God?

When I became an Anglican (from a background of a different church tradition), I was at first quite puzzled by the choice of Scripture passages that Anglican (that is, Church of England) services kept coming back to—the Benedictus (Luke 1.68–79) in Morning Prayer, the Magnificat (Luke 1.46–55) in Evening Prayer, and the Nunc Dimittis (Luke …

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The seven practices of evangelical spirituality

Evangelical identity is often thought to be best defined by the four aspects defined by David Bebbington in his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989; London: Routledge, 2003): There are four qualities that have been the special marks of Evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives …

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What does worship involve?

When I became an Anglican (from a background of a different church tradition), I was at first quite puzzled by the choice of Scripture passages that Anglican (that is, Church of England) services kept coming back to—the Benedictus (Luke 1.68–79) in Morning Prayer, the Magnificat (Luke 1.46–55) in Evening Prayer, and the Nunc Dimittis (Luke …

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