“I enjoyed your sermon this morning, but it was just too long. In this day and age, with shorter attention spans, you just can’t preach for longer than 20 minutes. For all our sakes, you just have to make it shorter. Anything longer than that is counter-productive!”
Author Archives: Tony Payne
Finding Jesus at GAFCON
Up front, Sola Panel
The buses left early for our trip (or pilgrimage, as it was styled) to the Mount of Olives. It offered a strange mix of experiences: joy at the extraordinary singing of the African choir, who led us in a brief prayer service on the mountain; fascination at seeing the places where Jesus walked and talked and prayed and was betrayed; eye-rolling distaste for how it all has been turned into a site for religious tourism and idolatry (the Franciscan church at Gethsemane being an extraordinary example of both); and above all, a strange blankness at not feeling even one little bit closer to Jesus through the whole experience. (more…)
Virtues we dislike: dignity
Up front, Sola Panel
We shouldn’t be shocked when non-Christians find Christian virtues out of date, incomprehensible or just plain hateful. The natural person, Paul reminds us, “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him” (1 Cor 2:14). (more…)
Fair cop on Fairtrade
Interchange, Sola Panel
The last refuge of irony
Up front, Sola Panel
They say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Or is it satire?
Whichever it is, I know it’s not irony. Irony has a much better reputation. It’s the Honda Accord Euro of wit: classy, effective, understated. Things ‘drip’ with irony, like honey from the comb, or blood from a wound. But the strangest and most delicious aspect of irony is that it is usually invisible to the very person speaking the words. When Caiaphas says that it would be better that one man should die for the people, rather than the whole nation perish, he does not realize the bittersweet truth he is uttering, although we readers do. (more…)
Self-immolation in ministry
Gordon’s stirring and encouraging piece on Spurgeon finished with a typically Chengian twist of the knife: do we work hard enough these days in ministry? Has the pendulum swung too far towards stress-relief and self-maintenance? Do we worry too much about ‘overdoing it’, and thus fail to take up opportunities that come to hand?
Nowist Left and Right
Dread, joy and Morning Prayer
Standing on the 5th tee at St Michael’s in Sydney’s East, the golfer experiences a mixture of nervousness and dread. Here (with some translational notes for non-golfers) is what it’s like.
Christians and writing
What difference does being a Christian make to the task and craft of writing? I was left pondering this after Mark Tredinnick’s keynote address at Saturday’s Faithful Writer conference.
Psychosomatic wellness
I’m getting the hang of this blog business. When it’s the weekend and you want a rest, apparently what you do is drag out some ancient or obscure quote, and let that suffice for a post. The Pyromaniacs do this with Spurgeon, and it works a treat.
The ethics of everyday evangelism
Gav’s post on the “danger of living the gospel without speaking the gospel” has sparked off one of those debates that we evangelicals sometimes have—you know those ones which seem to become more hairsplitting and hard to follow the longer they go on. In this case, it’s the old question of ‘whose job is it to evangelize?’.
Shifting to the personal
Pastoral Ministry, Sola Panel
This morning, just for something different, and not at all because some of the Sola Panellists have gone quiet and there’s nothing in the cupboard (guys!), let me suggest that you spend your time doing some listening instead: check out this month’s Briefing Lounge podcast, Shifting to the personal’. (more…)
Charismatic culture
In the comments from one of my GAFCON posts, Sam asks this interesting question:
While reading the material on the GAFCON website during the conference I couldn’t help notice the charismatic flavour of many of the comments, particularly those of the African Bishops. Do you have any thoughts on how you see this impacting the wider Anglican community in the future?
Serendipity
Weird. Having uploaded my post about Jonathan Leeman’s excellent article on individualism about five minutes ago, I notice that Jonathan has just posted the first few paragraphs and a link to the article in pdf form. We didn’t organize this, I swear!
What if individualism isn’t really the problem?
One of the many rewards of running our first Matthias Media USA conference last year was the time spent getting to know our hosts at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC—including Jonathan Leeman, who runs the always interesting 9Marks blog, and pulls together their eJournal.