Mark Chester
How to nail Father’s Day at your church
13 June 2018The idea of celebrating Father’s Day in church is one that divides us. Is it an opportunity not to be missed? An irrelevance? A cause for celebration? Commercial exploitation? What are your views? Perhaps you think it’s fine as a secular tradition, but not for the church? Hopefully I can change your mind... I’ll get a few things straight first - some facts we can build on. The modern Father’s Day was first celebrated in churches; it is not an invention of the greetings card industry. Father’s…
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Reaching out to dads
17 May 2018That morning, 20 dads and their children crossed the threshold of our building; only two of them had ever done so before. They came to have fun with their children, to chat to other dads and to eat bacon rolls. Who Let the Dads Out? had begun, and God was prompting a change in church outreach culture. Addressing a gender imbalance in our churchesHow many times have you heard people bemoan how few men there are in church? The reasons are, no doubt, many and varied, but when we look at the nature…
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