Author Archives: The Briefing

Making singleness better

Life

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There are those who say that singleness is better, but unfortunately that is not the experience of many who have been single long-term. Tim Adeney looks at why, and what we can do to love and serve the single people in our churches. (more…)

Walking with Gay Friends

Review

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Walking with Gay Friends
Alex Tylee

Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove, 2007, 160pp.

Suggesting that homosexuality is a sin is unpopular. Going further and suggesting that change and healing from homosexual sin is possible is always going to be a tough sell. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Alex Tylee manages to achieve in Walking with Gay Friends. (more…)

Is it easy to love our neighbours?

Up front

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We’ve been reading the Sermon on the Mount around the dinner table, and it’s made for great discussion and interesting questions. (“Dad, why would someone want my tooth?”) Recently, we were talking about the issues Jesus raises concerning loving your neighbours and praying for those who persecute you. The discussion went something like this:
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Ministry in the military

Everyday Ministry

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‘Give up your life’ is a column featuring stories about people who have decided to put Jesus first in their thinking and decision-making. In our first-ever instalment, Alison Payne shares the story of James and Sarah Leitch, and what they are doing in the military.

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WordWatch: Jeremiah

Word Watch

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If someone accuses you of being ‘a real Jeremiah’, what are they saying about you? Is it a compliment or an insult? Last year, Anu Garg had a go at offering a definition. For the uninitiated (i.e. the non-word-obsessives), Anu is the Indian-born, American computer and word geek who runs ‘A Word a Day’ (http://wordsmith.org/awad), a free daily email newsletter with 600,000 subscribers in 200 countries. What did he make of ‘Jeremiah’? Here’s his explanation:
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From homosexuality to the gospel

Up front

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Have you noticed how often non-Christians raise the issue of homosexuality with us these days? “Why is the church so anti-gay?” “What do you think about gay marriage?” “How can you be against two people being in a long-term, loving and supportive relationship? Why should it matter what gender they are?” (more…)

Creating the right question

Up front

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I’ve heard it said that, in terms of relating the gospel to culture, the mistake that traditionalists make is that they give the right answers to the wrong questions; they’re answering questions that no-one is asking anymore. They’re tackling issues and fighting fights that belong to a previous generation. (more…)

A truly reformed pastor

Interchange

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In Briefing #365, Gavin Perkins wrote an Up Front piece which argued that “the good pastor is actually primarily an evangelist”. He argued for this on the basis that Jesus’ parable in Luke 15 talks about a shepherd who leaves the 99 in order to find the one who is lost, and on the basis that Jesus saw the helpless crowds in Matthew 9 as “sheep without a shepherd”. He also reminded us of the example of our hero Richard Baxter in this regard (author of The Reformed Pastor). (more…)

Reflections on reading the Bible with my kids

Everyday Ministry

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For the first 15 years of my life, I thought of the Bible as bizarre, and I thought of Jesus as existing in the same realm as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. God did amazing work in my life to show me how true the Bible is, but my old self lingers on. I find it particularly hard to make sense of the cultural foreignness of the Old Testament.

I have been reading through Genesis with my nine-year-old daughter for the past couple of months, and it’s been a lesson in humility. I come to Genesis with all of the questions of my old life: did the flood really happen? Did Abraham and Isaac really pass their wives off as their sisters, or did people just get the story confused and tell it twice? (I would have been a good liberal.) So it fascinates me the kinds of questions Anna chooses to ask.

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How to steal another man’s wife

Thought

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It’s not so hard to steal another man’s wife if you’re a king:

And Abner sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying, “To whom does the land belong? Make your covenant with me, and behold, my hand shall be with you to bring over all Israel to you.” And he said, “Good; I will make a covenant with you. But one thing I require of you; that is, you shall not see my face unless you first bring Michal, Saul’s daughter, when you come to see my face.” Then David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, for whom I paid the bridal price of a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” And Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband Paltiel the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go, return.” And he returned. (2 Sam 3:12-16; emphasis mine.)

I put it to you that King David ended up as a nasty, sleazy piece of work because he always was (1 Kgs 1:1-4, 2 Sam 11). (more…)

Reading the Bible with your ears open

Life

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You read what you hear. Even with the Bible. You read what you hear.

Let me explain. Study leave got me to England in 10 inches of snow. Beautiful. Because it closed the airports, it almost got me to France. How would I have explained that to the college board? Then driving around a country other than mine just confused me; so many signs supposedly telling me what to do, but I didn’t have the right framework to assimilate them so that they could actually make sense.

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