Steve Timmis on Parachurch

I know saying this isn?t going to win me any friends, but someone has to tell the king he?s naked. Is it not a quiet madness for churches to largely outsource their discipleship (to parachurch agencies) and training (to theological colleges)? The best context for both discipleship and training is the people of God on mission (a.k.a. church).

Steve Timmis on Church

If church is primarily an event when the people of God gather, and in that gathering they are equipped to take the gospel as individuals out into the world, then praise God for that intent and consequent action. If church is an identity which is ours as a people who gather around the Word and who live together under that Word so that the world might see the fruit of the gospel in adorning lives and hear the gospel spoken as the explanation, then praise God for that!

For us, church is a community being shaped by the Word through the Spirit for its shared life in the world.

Steve Timmis on Church

I guess we understand church as an activity that is defining of our identity. The people of God is the overarching category, and ?church? is one of the ways in which they are described. This might work as one of those working definitions: ?a company of God's people called together by the gospel, to live under the gospel and make the gospel known by her life and her words?.

Steve Timmis on Love

God has made us to be lovers?lovers of God and lovers of others!