I am continuing my trip down memory lane. So far I have posted my personal blogging highlights from the years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Today we reach 2005.
At the beginning of the year I was still at the height of what was a really defining dialogue for the early days of this blog, with a gentleman who longtime Christian blog readers will be familiar with as the Jollyblogger. David hasn’t been active on the Internet in recent times, since 5 years ago this December he was diagnosed with cancer. Having said that, he is still preaching over at the church he pastors. I enjoyed listening to a recent sermon of his: The Gift while writing this post.
David is a Presbyterian and yet I found he and I agreed on far more than we disagreed. So much so that some people thought we were the same person in the early days! So, come January 2005 I was looking for things to disagree with him about to prove that we were two people!
In February, I shared a Simple Gospel summary which led to a lot of criticism at the time. Interestingly, given the fact that I would later write Raised With Christ, as far as I can remember nobody complained at the time that there was a glaring hole in that summary: the resurrection of Jesus!
March 2005 saw me mentioning our forthcoming move as a church into the cinema. At the time we were around 100 adults, but I spoke of how we were convinced God was calling us to build a large church in North London. I thank God that the work has been so blessed of God in recent years. It was really like he pressed the fast forward button.
Over the year I also wrote a few posts on preaching including:
- Preaching that changes lives and not just minds
- Understanding the mind and preaching part 1
- Understanding the mind and preaching part 2
- Keep them hanging on
- What does true preaching look like?
- Preaching with passion and imagination
- The costs and rewards of preaching to be a soul winner
- Preaching to change the mind and heart
The Toronto blessing was a time when some believed the church was going mad. At the time I wrote a substantial article responding to the phenomena. It was the first substantial Christian article I ever wrote. To mark the 11 year anniversary of the events I posted it on my blog. It is hard to believe that it will be 20 years next May! As I said back then, “Some of my reformed friends are uncomfortable with the fact that I am willing to see good in what happened. No doubt some of my charismatic friends will be unhappy with the fact that I accept that unhelpful excesses also occurred in some places.” I commend the article as it includes some suggestions about how to respond to unusual phenomena.
I took a moment to pause and ask why bother blogging, and my rather bold views of what blogging could accomplish do remain valid today.
A major series of 2005 was my interview with the translators of the ESV. I think it still makes interesting reading today but I apologize for the formatting errors that have somehow crept in due to the various hosting moves over the years. I really could use a blogging intern to help me tidy some of those older posts up. Any volunteers?
I used the blog to put forward a couple of controversial ideas. The first was that Galatians was written before the Jerusalem council, and the second Did Paul meet Jesus? I also posted on the New Perspectives on Paul.
Another major series was based on a sermon I preached Churches that Change the World this includes some posts on a fascinating way of looking at personality in a team, Social Styles.
I posted the results of a conversation with my then 8 year old, on the question What is Love? and preached a sermon inspired by this.
2005 will forever be remembered as the year of the London Tube bombings which was a moment of real merciful deliverance for us as a nation from what could have been so much worse.
All in all, I think 2005 was a vintage blogging year, and I commend some of these old blog posts for your interest.
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