A Guide For Christians Moving Home

Well, the Church Sofa family have moved home to what is now known as “Sofa Castle”, to celebrate we’ve put together this little collection of tips for moving home, or at least how a Christian should move home.

1. While looking around people’s homes, during the “house searching” phrase, ensure you leave Christian literature on their dining room table.
2. When looking for a house, ensure you find a place with enough space for a chapel.
3. It’s not unheard of for people to leave furniture behind when they move, as sometimes they don’t need it in their new home, or sometimes they just can’t fit it out the door. If you’re leaving a cupboard or anything with a drawer, it will always be nice for the new home owner to discover a copy of the Gideons Bible within it.
4. Don’t forget to leave your large cross behind on the wall. You can always build a new one.
5. Pass a letter on to your buyer, via your Christian solicitor, advising of how blessed you hope they’ll be in their new home.
6. Make sure anything alcohol related is covered up, this is to ensure you aren’t responsible for the faith of your removal men stumbling.
7. During your house move itself, ensure you take regular breaks for water, food, prayer, praise, and Bible readings.
8. Once you’ve moved home, ensure you drop Evangelistic leaflets down your road, or if you really want to “Move Like Jesus”, knock on all the doors in your new road and ask them if they want to go to Church with you next Sunday.
9. Has a neighbour just knocked on your door to introduce themselves? Ask if theres anything you can pray for?
10. Ensure you play a song like this really really loud, out the windows:

Obviously, dont forget to build that chapel.

Any more you suggest?

10 Tips to keep a Tidy Christian House

They say that “cleanliness is next to godliness”, I’m not sure who “they” are, and I’m not sure if “they” are right.   But  one time, while cleaning up for Housegroup, I did wonder. Are there “Christian ways to keep a house clean”? (Its the way my mind seems to work)

After consulting some particularly godly people, I gathered the following tops to keep a tidy Christian house.

1. Invite housegroup to meet at your place… EVERY WEEK!!
2. Preach on servanthood at Church. Encourage people to put that into action by cleaning up your place.
3. Do not store up ANY treasures. Live a minimal life. Throw out EVERYTHING apart from your bible.
4. Dont drink things like Tea that needs things like Tea Bags, as that creates needless waste… drink red wine… just like Jesus.
5. Dont buy any Christian books. Convince your church to get it for the church book lending library, and borrow it from there instead.
6. Only have one Bible. (Possibly the King James Version)
7. Throw out your DVDs / Blurays… Sign up to Pureflix.com instead.
8. Avoid beer bottles being built up. Drink only red wine. (Better if you buy red wine in those big boxes)
9. You pray for the spirit of peace to come over your house everyday. Just hope that no one looks in the garden.
10. Treat your house like Holy Ground… TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!!!

How do you keep your house tidy?

10 Tips For Hosting A Christian Christmas Party

Well, its Christmas. As well as the season of mince pies, Santa, Christmas Carols, nativity plays, and random livestock, it is also the season of the Christmas Party. But how should a Christian host a Christmas party?

Here are 10 tips to help you host a Christian Christmas Party… 

1. Remember this is a Christian CHRISTMAS Party. Remind people of the authentic Christmas experience, and bring livestock into your home.
2. Give plenty of thought to the music you play. Sofa recommends something like this.
3. Boil the mulled wine… lots.
4. Arrange for someone to sit next to your door in your hallway, whispering scripture into peoples ears as they enter. This is to ensure peoples minds are on scripture as soon as they arrive. (And not on the weirdo sat in your hallway).
5. Host an outdoor worship service in your garden. Make sure its loud.
6. As well as remembering the birth of Jesus, this is also the season of giving. Ensure all your guest have a suitable Bible commentary as a present. In regards to any presents you receive, ensure you pause and offer a prayer of thanks before opening EVERY present.
7. Need a party game? Play guess the Bible Reference.
8. Its Christmas. The season of GREAT JOY! What ever happens, ensure all your guests are smiling. A lot.
9. Obviously, you also need to be smiling alot.
10. In the spirit of the season, have a live nativity scene outside your front door. This is probably better with livestock.

How To Get Good Seats At The Church Nativity Service

There’s something about Christmas I do currently enjoy. Maybe its markets, perhaps its the Doctor Who specials, or the challenge to mull everything possible. Since Little Sofa has come into the world, I have also started to attend… and kinda enjoy Nativity plays. I have noticed, that as cute as they are, there seems to be A LOT of people wanting to get the good seats whenever their little ones are performing.

What if your church has a nativity service? How do you get good seats while watching the Church Nativity Service?

Here’s our tips*:

1. Use your secret escape tunnel from church to sneak INTO church.
2. Ninja skills to sneak past people.
3. Arrange mince pies to be given out at the right time… walk past the crowd while distraction takes place.
4. Work as a team with people, and take various different routes to the best seats available. Save the seats for the rest of your team once you get there.
5. Bible Bash your way to the front.
6. Wear a jumper saying “I’m Only Here For The Beer”, people will be so busy looking shocked at your jumper, that they will forget to be shocked by the Bible Bashing.
7. Got a church with pews? Army crawl your way under the pews, past people, and into your ideal pew.
8. Write your name on the pew the week before. Therefore if anyone sits there, you can justifiably say “Thats my pew!”
9. Stuck at the back of the queue? Starting from the back, bless each person in turn with free chocolate / mince pies / port etc. Keep working the queue until you get to the front. Not only will you get to the front (and therefore the seats you want), but you’re church also feels blessed by you because of it.
10. Fly a drone into the church hall. Watch on the drones camera. Possibly while sat in your warm car.

Any other ideas?

*Obviously if you do any of this, people may look at you oddly / arrange for you to be arrested. Good Luck…

Keeping Christian Families Entertained During The Holidays

Welcome to the school holidays! If you don’t have kids, this probably means an easier journey to work, if you do this probably means you, or someone else needs to come up with ways to stop the little darlings from watching nothing but Cbeebies all day long. 

But what can be done to entertain young Christian families throughout the holidays? Well Sofa is here to help*.

Here is our list of ways to keep Christian families entertained during the school holidays…

1. Compile a list of all the local holiday clubs. GET TO ALL OF THEM.
2. Learn a Bible verse a day.
3. Colour in pencil drawings of crosses.
4. Picnics! AKA portable communions…
5. Go on a family pilgrimage. (Possibly to the local cheap family friendly pub)
6. Take all your toilet rolls and try recreating the Tower of Babel.
7. Encourage the smalls ones to make a joyful noise! Joyful… may mean screaming…
8. Build a castle out of left over Bible study notes.
9. Is it raining outside? Time to encourage baptisms in the puddles.
10. When all else fails… 80s Christians movies on Youtube? (On second thoughts dont do that. Some of them are quite scary!)

Any other ideas you would like to add?

*Obviously “help” is a subjective concept…

Big List of Biblical Baby Names

Are you soon to be expecting a beautiful new bouncing baby / daughter / addition to your life? Having a new addition to the family involves a number of important choices, such as choosing pushing chairs, toys, and names. Its choosing a name for your new baby, which can really become a sticking point… Have you considered a Biblical name for your baby?

To help. Here’s our Big List of Biblical Baby Names*

1. Lois (Named after either a DC comics character, or Timothy’s Gran) 
2. Mo. (Short for Moses)
3. Del (Short for Delilah – perfect if from a hair dressing family)
4. Zurishaddai (It would be fairly unique, and a challenge to school teachers taking the register)
5. Sam (Short for Samson. Keep them away from anyone called Del)
6. Mat. (Short for Matthias)
7. Jude / Judith. (Named after Judas Iscariot) 
8. Luc. (Short for Lucifer) 
9. Lot. (His future wife will have lots of fun.)
10. Andy. (Short for Andrew. Its a good name)

Are there any you think should be included? Obviously… the more interesting the better! 

10 Christian Insults To Consider.

Sometimes, people get to you. Admit it, they do. Go on, its ok its only you and I here. When people get you, do you ever really want to turn around and tell them to *******!!!!!!! away?

Obviously you don’t say it like that, because you’re a Christian, and Christians dont insult people right?

What if Christians did insult people? What would a Christian insult look like?

Here are ten to consider using at Church on Sunday:

1. In our fathers house there are many rooms. May you be in the opposite wing to me.
2. If you were around then, you probably wouldn’t have been the disciple Jesus loved.
3. You are the Alliance to my Oasis.
4. You can sit on my left.
5. Doubting Thomas looks certain next to you.
6. May you look back at Sodom.
7. When I look at you, I am reminded that there are things sent to test our faith.
8. That was done with all the subtlety of Mark Driscoll.
9. Some people are wheat and others chaff.
10. Some people are like angels who fell from heaven. You climbed up from the other place right?

Any more?

10 Things to do With Old Bible Study Notes

Can I talk Bible Studies for one moment? Or at least Bible Study notes? It feels like a product of another time, but our Church went through a time when we were all given bible study booklets for each new study we did in homegroups.

We have built a little collection of Bible study notes over the years, and have had a conversation about what to do with them.

Here’s the list of ideas that we’ve not agreed on.

1. Build a fort
2. Create a sheltered passage way to church*.
3. Build an army of paper plans.
4. Write down your answers, go back and look at them in a years time. Get hung up on how you got to that answer.
5. Cut them up and use them as wrapping paper this Christmas.
6. Use them as conversation starters with your church leader.
7. Give them as gifts to your neighbours.**
8. Keep them long enough for your Church to use them again. Use previous notes to appear really clever and that you know what you’re talking about.
9. Do you host the bible study at home? (You know… when Coronavirus isn’t a thing). Do you need to do some decorating? Are you after some wrapping paper? You know what to do…
10. Roll them all up, and tape them together. Creating some sort of scriptural flavoured social distancing enforcer bat. 

Any other ideas I should add?

*For when it’s safe and sensible to go back obviously…

** I didn’t say these would make you popular.

How Christians Spend The Extra Hour

Surprise! We have another hour of all this to live through. With the clocks going back we all have the gift of time, so, what are we going to do with that gift?

What are you going to do with that extra hour? Here are a few Christian responses to the clock change.

1. Think about praying and reading the Bible.
2. Make that bacon sandwich you’ve been meaning to make before church actually starts.
3. Work on that outside chapel you’ve been planning.
4. Go for a run. (Just kidding.)
5. Scroll through Facebook. Plan to pray for the people you see.
6. Read a book about how to manage your time well.
7. Realise that the Bible talks about rest in a positive way, and stay in bed. (To those parents out there, I’m sorry).
8. Drink coffee, stare into space whilst contemplating life. For an hour. Rock back and forth a little.
9. Rock up early to in person church, when quizzed, reassure people that you are just more Holy then them. (Don’t do this if you’re joining on line. Just. Don’t)
10. Eat a mince pie for Breakfast. Tweet about it.
11. Hide in bed. Write a silly blog post. (That, with an ounce of planning, would have meant said blog post would have been released on Friday).

Getting a Christian Bathroom

We’ve been in the lucky position recently that we’ve recently had our bathroom renovated. Which means that we’ve had to ask ourselves a lot of bathroom related questions recently.

Here are some of the ideas that we’ve found to go into a Christian Bathroom*. (Affiliate links are below)

1. A nice big Bath. You know… for people who don’t do baptisms properly.
2. An ark. You know… to go in the bath.
3. Have a speaker in there streaming gentle relaxing worship music.
4. Toilet Paper. With inspirational Christian Tweets printed on them?
5. Some red wine smelling soap. Because communion.
6. A label next to the warm water tap, marked as “Holy Water”.
7. Some bathroom mats.
8. A glass pen. To write Bible verses on the mirror.
9. A biblically inspirational shower curtain.
10. A nice big sink… you know… for people who don’t do baptisms properly.

What would you add?

*Not all of these ideas were accepted into the final bathroom look.