It’s sometimes said of a minister of a congregation (and not necessarily with unkind intent) that, although they struggle somewhat as a preacher, they are brilliant pastors. Sometimes the comment runs in the other direction: “[Insert name] is a fine preacher, but he lacks pastoral ability”. It’s not hard to grasp what people mean by this. Some people are fine communicators in the pulpit, but are quite poor at interpersonal relationship. They’re like the minister who is regularly seen working at his desk, but who has trained his secretary so well that it is almost impossible to speak to him without an appointment (which could be anything up to two weeks away!). Other ministers have attractive personalities and good social skills, and are loved by all, but somehow they fail to speak to a congregation with clarity and conviction. (more…)
Archives: gordon-cheng
Preaching hell to depressed teens
Up front
I’ve been thinking about hell quite a bit recently—not because I enjoy it, because I’m obsessed with morbid subjects or because I’m reading Peter Bolt’s Living with the Underworld. I’ve been thinking about it because I was warned recently that we should beware of how we teach the subject of ‘hell’ and God’s wrath to teenagers. Many of them, so the argument goes, are prone to low self-esteem, depression and suicidal thoughts. They have no trouble believing that they are sinners, and that God is ‘mad’ at them. So we should beware of manipulating their feelings with lurid and excessive depictions of hell, which would compound their misery rather than helping them to understand God’s grace and love. In addition, the New Testament’s way is not to subject already shamed individuals to dreadful and imaginative descriptions of God’s wrath. (more…)
A reminder
People who are on slippery slopes don’t like slippery slope arguments.
The slippery slope argument says that once you allow ‘A’, you are at the top of a slippery slope which will sloppily and slippily carry you down the slidy thing you are on to ‘Z’. The people who are heading in the direction of ‘Z’ tend not to like being told they’re heading that way, presumably because they are ‘A’-type people.
More on Archbishops and resurrections
Recently, Sandy Grant wrote to Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft of Perth, trying to discover what view the Archbishop took in response to one of his senior clergymen apparently denying the bodily resurrection of Christ. The response at the time was ambiguous. (Sandy commented on the topic here and here.)
The Lord’s Supper
I’m leading the Lord’s Supper this morning at church.
Broughton Knox on the coming of the Son of Man
For no other reason than because Sandy alluded to it in his post, I brought down from the bookshelf Broughton Knox’s discussion of the coming of Jesus, referred to in Matthew 24, 25 and 26. It comes from a chapter cheekily entitled ‘The Five Comings of Jesus’ which you can read for yourself if you have Broughton’s book. If you haven’t got it, here’s what he says:
Some weird verses about dead people
Once I get started on a train of thought, it can be a bit difficult to derail myself—that is, when it’s not far too easy. My post on ‘Praying to dead people for help’ is the latest train to bury itself on a track at the back of my mind.
Euthanasia and murder
A woman is currently standing trial for assisting in the death of her partner Graeme Wylie:
Alzheimer’s sufferer Graeme Wylie would have been unable to get and ingest the drug that killed him without the help of his partner, Shirley Justins, and friend Caren Jenning, Justins told the Supreme Court yesterday.
Preaching hell for the comfort of angry people
From (almost) the beginning of the Bible to the very end, the Bible is a book about judgement. The idea that judgement might come functions in the obvious way: to scare sinners. But it is also paradoxically comforting for angry people. It is especially comforting to those who are angry over the injustice they see in the world.
Zechariah—really struggling here! (Part 1)
Say it in a whisper, but Zechariah is not the first book that I would turn to when dipping into the Old Testament. Some books are easy to understand, and some books are not. Zechariah is not.
Pornography as art?
A great controversy has broken out over a photography exhibition featuring a series of naked and semi-naked adolescents—some in sexually suggestive poses—photographed by artist Bill Henson. As Wikipedia summarizes:
Prayers of the dead
It’s a commonplace of the Roman Catholic tradition that those Christians who have died are now in heaven interceding for us. So the authoritative (for Roman Catholics) Roman Catholic Catechism asserts,
Open up the doors: Music in the Modern Church by Mark Evans
Mark Evans is a Christian who is also part of the Department of Contemporary Music Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. (He’s also written articles for The Briefing on subjects relating to his area—see Briefing #236 and #263). His book Open up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church (Equinox, London, 2006) is useful, but be warned: it is not for the musically faint-hearted. Having had piano lessons in my child- and teenager-hood, I didn’t mind too much the occasional sentence like this one:
Preaching hell to depressed teens
I’ve been thinking about hell quite a bit recently—not because I enjoy it, or because I’m obsessed with morbid subjects, and not even because I’ve been reading Peter Bolt’s excellent new book Living with the Underworld (which, perhaps surprisingly, given the title, looks away from hell rather than towards it).
Comment moderation and other housekeeping
Sharp-eyed Sola Panel readers will have noticed that the evil spam monster has, just once or twice, crept through our defences and left us inadvertently advertising the latest—well, less sharp eyed readers don’t need to know. We’ve also had a rash of posts (from just a couple of people) that we had to delete, according to our ‘be godly’ and ‘stay on topic’ guidelines.