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…)
Doing good: The shape of the Christian life (Part 1): Why we don’t
Life
Stuart Heath argues that the Christian life is more than just having faith, it’s about doing good.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series. Read Part 2 and Part 3.
“Being Christian is not about doing good things”, quoth the preacher. “It’s about trusting in Jesus.” Here is the uniqueness of the Christian story: God in Christ has acted on our behalf. We could never be good enough to satisfy God’s requirements—we deserve to be condemned. But Jesus took our punishment for us, rescuing us from God’s right anger. God calls us not to earn our salvation, but to trust that he can save us. This is a beautiful, soul-satisfying truth. But when we talk about being Christian, if we only ever speak about ‘believing in Jesus’, we are dangerously out of step with the New Testament. (more…)
The strategy of God
Pastoral Ministry
Sola scriptura
Up front, Sola Panel
Life is full of decisions. Where do I go on holidays? What job should I choose? What should I have for dinner? Which side of the bed should I get out of? Should I get out of bed at all? Making decisions is a fundamental part of being human; we can’t avoid it, and we do it all the time. (more…)
iPod, iSermon, iRighteous?
“I was listening to a talk by Mark Driscoll the other day, and he said…” In my last two years of working with a congregation of mostly university students and young workers, I have lost count of the number of times I have heard this kind of statement. It represents an increasing trend among Christians — a trend that will only grow as our use of technology continues to expand. Whereas once I had to wait several years for a noted overseas Bible teacher to come to town and preach the word (say at a Katoomba convention), now the wonders of technology mean that, with a few clicks of the mouse, I can have a daily diet of sermons by about anyone from just about anywhere in the world: Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Mark Dever, John Stott, Don Carson, and so on. And I can listen to them not just while I’m sitting at my computer, but while I’m running, driving or sitting on the train. (more…)
The Word Became Flesh
Review
The Word Became Flesh: Evangelicals and the incarnation
Edited by David Peterson
Paternoster Press, Carlisle, 2003, 216pp.
Available for ordering from Moore Books (more…)
Duty first
Men: Firing Through All of Life
Al Stewart
Blue Bottle Books, Sydney, 2007, 168pp.
Available for ordering from Moore Books
02 9577 9966 (more…)
Ministry mind shifts
If we are going to develop people-focused ministries, certain shifts in our thinking must occur. The fundamental shift consists of moving away from an institutional view of gospel ministry towards a personal view of gospel ministry. We need to stop thinking how to build ministry around structures and start thinking about how to build ministry around people. (more…)
Fire in the bones: Truly meek
Then let me go further; the man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive. We all know about this, do we not? Is it not one of the greatest curses in life as a result of the fall—this sensitivity about self? We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished with all that; he no longer worries about himself and what other people say. To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending. So we are not on the defensive; all that is gone. The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, ‘You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you’. He never thinks: ‘How wonderful I really am, if only other people gave me a chance.’ Self-pity! What hours and years we waste in this! But the man who has become meek has finished with all that. To be meek, in other words, means that you have finished with yourself altogether, and you come to see you have no rights or deserts at all. You come to realize that nobody can harm you. John Bunyan puts it perfectly. ‘He that is down need fear no fall.’ When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too bad. You need not worry about what men may say or do; you know you deserve it all and more. Once again, therefore, I would define meekness like this. The man who is truly meek is the one who is amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as they do. That, it seems to me, is its essential quality.
From D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount Vol. 1 (Matthew 5:1-48), Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1971, pp. 57-8. Originally published by Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 1959-60. Used with kind permission from Inter-Varsity Press. (more…)
Nodding off
Up front
There is a famous Australian television commercial which features a man in a nightclub. The punchline of the ad is “I’m so cool, I dance on the inside”. In the weeks and months following, this saying was adopted for all kinds of situations—for example, “I’m so cool, I hug on the inside”. (more…)
Can Western Christians even think ethically any more?
Up front
To escape from drowning, you have to swim in what you are swallowing. Churches in the West are drowning in western values, drinking deeply without being able to swim in the muck they are drinking, let alone being able to escape. (more…)
Wreck-conciliation or reconciliation?
Up front
Reconciliation is a hot topic. It always has been and it always will be. In the first century, Paul wrote about reconciling Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:11-22). In the 20th-century, the nation of South Africa created the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ to deal with the atrocities of apartheid. The Australian Government is only now ‘reconciling’ with the indigenous population. (more…)
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…)
Smell the coffee
Up front, Sola Panel
A recent edition of our denominational newspaper here in Sydney featured an extended and very positive series of articles on the Fairtrade movement. Fairtrade is a ‘think global, act local’ sort of initiative which involves consumers in the West attempting to improve the lot of poor and exploited farmers in the third world by buying ‘Fairtrade’ products. By buying certified ‘Fairtrade’ coffee, for example, you ensure that a higher income flows to the cooperatives that produce it (usually 10% or so above the market price). The edition featured stories about Christians involved in the Fairtrade movement, and contained strong encouragement for churches to get involved—not only as a means of adding valuable momentum to the whole movement, but as a culturally attractive way of building links with our community and sharing the gospel. (more…)
What makes you angry?
Up front, Sola Panel
There was a surprising level of anger in our Bible study group the other night. We were studying Mark 2:13-3:6, and looking at four controversies between Jesus and religious leaders (particularly the Pharisees). We discussed the Pharisees’ religious background: they were very serious about keeping God’s law—so serious, they built up a whole bunch of other laws to protect themselves from going anywhere near breaking God’s law. For example, to protect themselves from breaking commandment #4 (don’t work on Saturday), they had a rule that one mustn’t even look into a mirror on the Sabbath because one might see a grey hair and be tempted to pluck it out, which might be construed as ‘work’. Our group sympathized with them a little: in much the same way that a modern Christian might make a blanket rule not to drink alcohol or visit a pub to protect himself from the possibility of causing offence or temptation to an alcoholic Christian brother, the Pharisees made rules to help them to honour God in all areas of life. (more…)