A deep and abiding passion to see our churches grow is a very dangerous thing. That may seem an odd observation to make, but it is a critical one. If we run with a passion to grow things without at… (more…)
This article is an edited transcript of a talk given by Phil Colgan at the 2014 Nexus conference in Sydney, written up and edited by Sam Freney. Personal references throughout are therefore applicable to Phil, not Sam. In my… (more…)
Tony Payne talks with Phillip Jensen about the history of The Briefing—how it began, what its aims have been, and where we stand now. ~ Tony Payne: Phillip, The Briefing was really your idea. You drew together the resources to… (more…)
I suppose it’s like looking at old baby photos, but over the past month or so I’ve been browsing through some of the classic early articles in The Briefing. I chuckled over some of the ‘Lead Balloons’ we ran in… (more…)
This article is an edited transcript of an address given at the 2014 Nexus conference in Sydney. ~ And when [Paul] had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the… (more…)
“What do you do for work?” is one of the most common questions that we ask when we meet someone new. For most of us, work is right at the heart of how we see ourselves and how we explain… (more…)
An address given at the AIM ‘Thinking Theologically’ conference held at Moore Theological College in June 2002.
I take it that the reason you have paid good money to be at this conference is not because theology happens to be a hobby of yours, like birdwatching or classical music or stamp collecting. Instead, it is because you are involved in some way in the work of the gospel, in the pastoring of God’s people and in the evangelizing of Sydney and the world.
I found myself a few weeks back visiting Tim (not his real name), doing Just for Starters. Tim was becoming a friend, now that we’d spent seven or so sessions together, looking at the Bible. First, we went through Simply Christianity—five studies from Luke’s Gospel. Now we were following up with the Just For Starters studies—seven basic Bible studies on key areas in the Christian life. Tim still wasn’t convinced that the Bible was true, but he’d accepted that Christ had died for sins and risen from the dead. We were having lively times of discussion.
Concerning the body, CS Lewis suggests that Christians have tended to oscillate uneasily between contemptuous denigration and extravagant deification, whereas what is required is glad and obedient acceptance. In his book The Four Loves, he says that broadly speaking there are three different views of the body. There are “the Neo-pagans—the nudists and the sufferers from the Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious”. Then there are those ascetic Pagans who called it the “tomb of the soul”, along with some Christians to whom the body is “a sack of dung”. And, thirdly, we have the view of Francis of Assisi, expressed by calling his body “Brother Ass”—useful and sturdy, but obstinate and in need of the stick.
In your book, Love Your God With All Your Mind, you criticize contemporary Western culture for being anti-intellectual and image-dominated. This is a fairly serious charge. What do you mean by it?
This article was published in Issue #292 (January 2003).
No one approaches an emotionally and politically charged issue like refugees out of disinterested neutrality. The very labels we attach, whether asylum seekers or illegal immigrants, puts us for or against refugees from the moment we open our mouths. In such a climate, it is only fair that I disclose the standpoint from which I approach the subject, by way of reminder that for many of us certain topics in Christian ethics, as well as being academically challenging, are highly personal. (more…)
You know subversives. They are the people who quietly undermine stable government and accepted institutions. They’re usually regarded as a threat to all that is good and ordered in society. They’re a threat, because they want to turn everything on its head.
Why do we celebrate Christmas on the 25th December each year? Do we know the exact date of Jesus birth?
To my knowledge, the exact date when Jesus was born is unknown. While we are on increasingly firm ground for the date of his death—early April 33—there’s no sure way of discovering the date of his birth.
Today, Friday, 20 September, 2002 is a great day. That’s because today is the day I finished reading the whole Bible to my eldest son, Ben.
In last month’s column, I looked at the bad experiences of the Old Testament prophets. I noted summary statements made by Jesus and Stephen about how every single Old Testament prophet was persecuted and attacked for his message. Ultimately, they were being attacked for the gospel message, because their message was one of judgment and salvation, both from the hand of God.
Culture is such a slippery word. It means something like ‘who are and what we do together’, which is about as broad a definition as you could hope for. A culture is more than a number of individuals—it refers to how those individuals interact with each other, and what those interactions produce. So, Australian culture is cricket, it’s opera, it’s Bondi beach, it’s Backyard Blitz. But it’s also Chinatown, it’s fine wine, it’s cynical humour, it’s Westfield Shoppingtown.
Here’s one more paradox for those living to serve Christ and to grow his kingdom. It’s one which has been taxing my mind, because it goes to the heart of what Christians believe. We live in the time that gets called ‘the now and not yet’—the period of history after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, but before the revelation of his lordship to the entire universe. It’s an in-between time, so we have the blessings and securities of the eternal age, and yet we don’t see them all, experience them all, know them entirely or enjoy them fully.
The church planting experience of Holy Trinity North Terrace.
What’s at the heart of your church? It’s either an easy question or a trick question. Answering ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ used to get me through the Sunday School quizzes, but will these answers work for me now? Trick question or not, it has left many a Parish Council debating long into the wee small hours. And it has certainly produced some long and cumbersome mission statements. I work at Holy Trinity North Terrace in Adelaide. We, too, have been through the process of developing a mission statement, on the way to developing a model for ministry. After looking over the shoulders of churches both here and overseas, our rector noticed that many of the statements told God what that particular church would do for him. Yet the Bible constantly tells us the opposite. It makes it abundantly clear what God has done for us.
The early church father, Irenaeus, was certainly not afraid to critique error. I was browsing through his Against Heresies the other day (as one does, in the Greek, without a dictionary, shortly before dictating my latest article for The Ivory Tower Review), and I came across the following passage that I felt bound to share. Irenaeus was arguing against the heresy of the Gnostics, who had an incredibly elaborate, and elaborately incredible, account of how the world came to exist. One of Irenaeus’ chief polemical methods was simply to describe in detail what the Gnostics were actually teaching, with only a few minor comments being required to point out how absurd it all is.
There are books; there are workbooks; there are audio and video tapes. If your head is above the sand in the world of Christian books, you will have heard of the Boundaries series, authored by Dr Henry Cloud and Dr John Townsend.