Preaching to women on sex

|

I was pleased to see the publication of the article ‘Talking Sex’ in Briefing #312. After giving some talkson 1 Corinthians 7 during the past year at a couple of different churches, I was saddened to hear many women say that they had never heard someone speak on sex and relationships before in a helpful and concrete way. Some of these women had been in church all of their life, and many were grandmothers. So when I was asked recently to give a seminar for female ministry trainees at a preaching conference, I chose the topic ‘Preaching on Sex’.

(more…)

Talking sex

Pastoral Ministry

|

Should Christians talk sex? Should preachers preach sex? There are compelling reasons why, despite the difficulty, the answer is ‘yes’.

I’m writing this article anonymously not because I am embarrassed about preaching on sex, or because there is something in particular to hide. I’ve preached on it many times and think it’s important that we address the topic regularly. It’s just that many people are embarrassed in preaching on the subject, and I would like to help others to address that difficulty, rather than find myself pigeon-holed as the preacher who will come and give a talk on the subject when your minister or women’s worker feels the topic is too hot to handle. It is a hot topic, that’s true; but that is just one more reason for addressing it head on from a biblical framework rather than avoiding it.

(more…)

Turning a Christian prayer into Muslim propaganda

|

Eight years ago, on 23 January 1996, Pastor Joe Wright delivered a prayer to the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka, USA. His prayer was remarkable for its courage and clarity in condemning many evils prevalent in American society and in Western societies generally.

(more…)

Learning not to trust

|

There is a certain mystique about newspapers—the piles of identical bulletins stacked in the newsagent, the solemn blackness of the headlines, the ink on your fingers, the wrinkly familiarity of spreading it out in front of you on the table. I’m not sure how the combination works, but whatever the reason, I still find it hard not to believe what I read there. There is a gravitas, a kind of aura of trust, that seems to emanate from the pages. Surely if it’s there in black and white, then it must have happened like that?

(more…)

The assault on marriage and family

|

That the institutions of marriage and family are under threat today is a no-brainer. All the indications point clearly to the fact that that the natural family and the covenant of marriage are both being stretched to breaking point. Many sources of attack could be mentioned, but the activities of the homosexual lobby deserve special mention.

(more…)

What’s wrong with same-sex ‘marriage’?

|

Recently I read of a church that fell into serious error. Apparently this happened under the influence of a newly arrived pastor whose predecessor—a godly man—had, for more than three decades, “never preached anything but the gospel truth”. How could this falling away happen so quickly? A friend of the church observed of the former pastor, “He told them the truth all those years. What he didn’t tell them was what wasn’t the truth”.1

(more…)

Leaving it all behind

Everyday Ministry

|

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.

(more…)

Hope for all the world?

Thought

|

Christians claim to believe that Jesus is Lord, and that his love is for all people. But if that is so, asks John Woodhouse, shouldn’t we be ambitious for our children to become philoxenes when they grow up?

(more…)

Use and abuse of the fathers and the Bible in trinitarian theology

|

A review of Kevin Giles, The Trinity and Subordinationism, IVP, Downers Grove, 2002.

The long debate among evangelicals about women’s ministry has brought many issues floating to the surface. It has challenged us to think about our view of Scripture and how it speaks to us today. It has prompted us to re-examine ordination itself and the traditional structures of ministry. And most recently, it has put the doctrine of the Trinity back on the agenda.

(more…)

A primer on trinitarian debates

Thought

|

The doctrine of the Trinity is, as someone once said, ‘the glory of the Christian religion’. It is the doctrine that defines orthodoxy, the doctrine that guarantees our knowledge of God, and the doctrine that secures our salvation. In the first four centuries, Christians worked very hard to articulate and defend this key belief, and we are all beneficiaries of their work.

(more…)