Welcome to our blog. We are a group of people passionate about seeing God's kingdom come in all its fullness here on earth. We want to partner with God in this process and to imagine what every sphere of society could look like if renewed and reconceived to reflect the image of our maker. To this end we affirm the revelation and authority of the Bible and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as breathed through history and available to us now. Our aim for this blog is to be a space to dream big, to think radically, to challenge orthodoxy, and to do it together.



We've named this collective endeavour Metanoia. It is derived from the Greek words meta, meaning change or beyond, and noos, meaning mind. It conveys a dual aim; to effect a change of mind regarding our world and our society; and to invite the One who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than we could ask or think, to take us beyond the limits of our human wisdom, towards His kingdom.



We invite you to join us.



Sunday, 17 October 2010

At the city gate...

Recently some of the Metanoia team took part in a conference called CityGate near Manchester. The topic of the conference was biblical principles of Business and the keynote speaker was Landa Cope who is founding dean of the International College of Communcations within the University of the Nations (the training arm of YWAM) and who now runs the Template Institute.

The conference was great and I'll try and put together a summary of the key points at some stage soon. But first I want to take this opportunity, as we're just setting out on this venture, to introduce Landa Cope and acknowledge the significance of her teaching on my understanding of the importance and relevance of the bible to the whole of society.


Landa's teaching has had a profound impact on my life and faith since I first watched her series of teaching videos on The Old Testament Template around 6 years ago.

The basic premise of this teaching is that the story of Israel told in the bible is, at its heart, a narrative of how God took a rabble of ex-slaves and made them into a prosperous, powerful nation. The Israelites left Egypt with no social infrastructure at all and God taught and discipled them in his principles of government, business and economics, science and healthcare, education and communication, etc. etc. By the time Solomon is king, their renown as a wise, just, stable and prosperous nation has spread internationally. (1 Kings 10)

Hearing this message was the first time anyone had ever told me that the bible has something to say about these areas of society. I was absolutely blown away by this and couldn't believe that this aspect of the bible had never been taught to me. Did you ever hear a sermon on principles of Government? Or on the biblical guidelines for sanitation? I certainly hadn't and it frustrated me so much to think that all these years I'd been unaware that the bible talks about these things. Because ultimately, if we don't understand that God is the God of stable economic systems and the God of health and safety in the workplace (yes that's in the Bible!!) then we don't fully understand who he is.

The point is that if we want to understand how to make our nation (or any other for that matter) just, stable, prosperous, then we need to look to God and his word. Furthermore, God's word needs to be the yard-stick by which we measure and test all things; whether it be the latest educational theory, the current government's economic policy, the latest scientific breakthrough or our understanding of our own identity. God's word contains principles and truths that apply to every arena of life.

This is the reason I'm a part of Metanoia. I want to learn all I can of God's ways and truths in every domain of society. My motivation for this is two fold. Firstly, I want to know everything there is to know about this amazing God who made the heavens and the earth, I don't want to miss anything. And secondly, I want to see nations transformed to be just, stable and prosperous by the application of Gods' truth in every domain.

I'd like to suggest that if you are inspired by this blog and the things you read and would like to learn more and take part in the debate, a great way to start out would be to watch Landa Cope's video series. The series comprises 10 sessions of around 45 minutes each, so it's not a small undertaking. But in terms of comprehensive, inspiring and challenging teaching on this subject, I've yet to find anything quite as good as this, so it's well worth it. The video's are available on the Template Institute website (see link above) in the Related Sources section via the link to 'Landa's Video'.

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