Archives: everyday-ministry

Leaving it all behind

Everyday Ministry

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For many of us, the idea of leaving the comforts of home, friends and family to serve God as a missionary overseas is an idea we find impossible to consider. It stubbornly remains, year after year, in the box labelled ‘Things I’m not ready to trust God with yet’. In this article, Philip Nicholson gives us his candid reflections on what life has been like for him since he took ‘mission work’ out of the box.

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Just a matter of opinion? Straight answers to curly questions #3

Everyday Ministry

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In this series, we have been developing robust and creative responses to some of the most common objections to Christian faith heard today. The first was that all religions are the same, for which we developed a logical response. The second was that religion is just cultural, to which we developed an empirical response. The third idea many people today have is perhaps the most difficult to respond to: it is the idea that religion belongs entirely in the domain of personal opinion, and that one person’s opinion is as good as another.

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Isn’t religion just cultural? Straight answers to curly questions #2

Everyday Ministry

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In the first article in this series, we looked at the commonly raised objection that all religions are basically the same, and developed a logical response. In this article, we continue to explore common objections. The second feeling that people have revolves around the ‘lottery factor’—the feeling that a person’s religion is largely a product of the country they happen to be born in—that it’s all just cultural.

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Straight answers to curly questions #1

Everyday Ministry

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‘Can Jesus really be as special as you say?’ Sooner or later, this question will come up when people learn that we are Christian. It may emerge in a number of forms, and be asked in a number of ways, but it is rarely far from the surface. In this three-part series, Kim Hawtrey helps us to understand this basic question in its different forms, and equips us with a variety of ways to answer it.

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Ministry and pornography: some practical help

Everyday Ministry

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As Tony Payne mentioned in his ‘Couldn’t Help Noticing’ column, the Australia Institute has published a report—Youth and Pornography in Australia—the first survey of Australian teenagers’ exposure to pornography on the internet. It shows that 84 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls aged 16 and 17 have stumbled onto sex sites on the internet. In addition, 38 per cent of boys and 2 per cent of girls say they have sought out sex sites. For boys, 73 per cent report that they have watched X-rated videos, with 20 per cent accessing these monthly. 11 per cent of girls have watched an X-rated video.

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Revelation and recovery: A wife’s story

Everyday Ministry

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I knew practically nothing about homosexuality when my husband of 10 years told me the shocking truth that he would prefer tobe in a relationship with a man. He hadn’t ‘acted out’ or been unfaithful to me in practice but I wasn’t what he wanted. I felt like the poor consolation prize. Due to his Christian values he knew he wasn’t permitted what he really wanted, a gay relationship, so I was better than nothing. Prior to this, I had believed we were happily married. However, my husband was just acting the role of the devoted husband. It was a façade to hide the truth. His Christian life was also almost a sham. He went through the motions of being a committed Christian but in reality he was practically spiritually dead.

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The One Minute Bible Study

Everyday Ministry

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Especially for men who need to rediscover their love of God’s word

For many men, the 2.4 kids, job promotion and house in the suburbs are accompanied by a dramatic decline in meeting with others to read the Bible.

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Diary of an urban parson

Everyday Ministry

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In which one such pilgrim records a month’s worth of the blessings and travails of daily Christian service, and in which he demonstrates for us his theology in action.

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What’s stopping you?

Everyday Ministry

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Why we don’t evangelize and what to do about it

We sing about having the words of eternal life and wonder how we ever “keep them in”, but keep them in we do. Many of us would claim to be less evangelistic—to have the gospel on our lips less often, to miss more golden opportunities for witness—than we would like. What is stopping us?

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A silent grief: Pastoral reflections on infertility

Everyday Ministry

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When a couple marries, they pray for the gift of children. What happens when the answer to that prayer is ‘no’? How do we cope with the disappointments of infertility? And to what extent is today’s biotechnology causing more problems than it solves?

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