West London Alliance Church

The Blog of Pastor Jude St. John

An Exciting Initiative for Leadership Development

If you have been a part of West London Alliance Church the past 5 years or so, you will be aware of our 10 Year Plan and have heard me speak of it in various ways and at various times. for example, our Jacqueline Street church plant, launching on Easter Sunday, is an integral part of that plan. The 10 year plan is most easily conisidered under

Best Books of 2021

Deciding on a “best book” is often very difficult, even when it is limited to the books read in one year. What makes a book “the best”? Is it the skill of the writer? Is it the impact of the content on one’s life? Is it the ground-breaking-ness of the content? These and many other criteria may come to mind when the

2021: A Year’s Worth of Reading

This year, as I summarize my reading from 2021, I do so with a fair amount of frustration; frustration at the current context of being in a pandemic; frustration with myself because my reading goals for the year were nowhere close to being achieved; frustration that my lack of reading gave rise to wasting time. Let me explain. This is the third
The Importance of EasterBy Conor Culverhouse   Easter was always a fun time of year growing up. As young children we painted eggs in school, ate a lot of chocolate and it always came with a two-week holiday. We would sing Easter-based hymns which contained some vague acknowledgement of the resurrection but were enjoyed mostly for their
Originally posted on April 30, 2009: In chapter 6 of The Doctrine of God, Frame discusses God's intimate presence with his people which he calls God's 'covenant presence'. He defines the covenant presence of God: "Covenant presence, then, means that God commits himself to us, to be our God and to make us his people. He delivers us by his grace
Originally posted on April 29, 2009: In chapter 4 of book 2 in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, John Owen summarizes the purpose or 'end' for which Christ died as well as the products of the event: "God, out of his infinite love to his elect, sent his dear Son in the fulness of time, whom he had promised in the beginning of the world,
Originally posted on April 28, 2009: Here are some quotes that I found helpful, interesting, challenging, or all of the above. And when he yells us to believe in the truth of his word, we must do so, both because his word can never prove false and because we have a moral obligation to believe it. God is the supreme interpreter of both himself
Romans 13 and Civil Disobedienceby Conor Culverhouse and Jake WorradTheory/Translations Language has and always will be, an integral part of communication.  However, language inevitably entails ambiguities and uncertainties which can lead to different interpretations of the same text.  This is exacerbated when translating words from
Originally posted April 25, 2009:Owen repeats a definition of the what the end of Christ's death is: The end of the death of Christ we asserted, in the beginning of our discourse, to be our approximation or drawing nigh unto God; that being a general expression for the whole reduction and recovery of sinners from the state of alienation, misery,