{"id":148,"date":"2012-04-24T18:33:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T17:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=148"},"modified":"2012-04-24T18:33:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T17:33:21","slug":"thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Thoughts&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<span itemprop=\"description\"><p>This blog brings together sermons and occasional Bible studies. I have started a separate blog for posting other usually short pieces, entitled simply &#8220;Thoughts&#8221;<br \/>\nSo far &#8220;Thoughts&#8221; contains the following.<\/p>\n<p>Building Collaborative Relationships<br \/>\nAs we consider the future of the Baptist family, many of us  are dreaming dreams about what church could be like at local, cluster, regional  and national levels. Financial constraints are focussing our minds on structures  and patterns. I suggest that we also need to look from a different perspective:  that of relationships. &#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Juggling with Chickens<br \/>\n\u201cJuggling with Chickens &#8211; Reflections on Pastoral Ministry today\u201d is a book in progress. A variation of the first chapter was published in the Baptist Times. The current version lives online starting at  http:\/\/www.pbthomas.com\/jugglingwithchickens\/ &#8230;&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Prophet-hood of All Believers\u201d<br \/>\nThere is so much I would like to say about government by church meeting and that will have to wait for a later post. For today I have added a new page to this blog, \u201cThe Prophet-hood of All Believers\u201d, which is the summary of a talk I have given to &#8220;Celebrate Jesus&#8221; this week. &#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>7 ideas to make Home Mission support more effective<br \/>\nAs a Home Mission Visitor and a Mission Consultant for more  than 20 years I offer the following suggestions about Home Mission support.  Although they referring primarily to churches receiving a grant to help them have a minister they can also apply to other mission situations. &#8230;.<\/p>\n<p> Things I miss about the good old days with lots of Associations<br \/>\nMore than thirty years ago Bushey Baptist Church encouraged me to become a lay preacher in Hertfordshire Baptist Association. By the time I  came before the Association Ministerial Recognition Committee five years later  I had preached in half of the churches of the Association, and at least half of  the Committee members had actually heard me preach. &#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>Why the most important Baptist Distinctive is \u201cThe Believers\u2019 Church\u201d<br \/>\n For four days in 2008 I took part in a conference at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg on  \u201cCongregationalism, Denominationalism and the Believers\u2019 Church\u201d. This brought<br \/>\n together mostly academics but also pastors from the Baptist, Mennonite and other Brethren traditions from Canada and the Northern USA. &#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Why I am glad I resisted the temptations to bivocational ministry<br \/>\nMore than thirty years ago I trained as a teacher and then taught science for five years before studying theology and entering pastoral  ministry. Teaching is a career which it is relatively easy to pursue part time  in conjunction with church ministry. How might life have been different if I<br \/>\n had been led to follow that route? &#8230;&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Anybody interested can find this new blog at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbthomas.com\/thoughts\">www.pbthomas.com\/thoughts<\/a> <\/p>\n<span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\"><span itemprop=\"description\">This blog brings together sermons and occasional Bible studies. I have started a separate blog for posting other usually short pieces, entitled simply &#8220;Thoughts&#8221;&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p btn-align-left\"><a class=\"blue zoom-btn\" href=\"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=148\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}