Recently, Sydney had the pleasure of hearing Mark Driscoll. In a two-week period, he spoke in many venues, including my church St Andrew’s Cathedral, where he twice addressed a packed gathering. His second address challenged our evangelistic ministry in this city: he lovingly told us 18 problems he saw we had. This caused considerable discussion amongst Sydney’s evangelical community. (more…)
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Where’s your ministry ‘AT’?
Up front
Christians and soldiers have a lot in common, or at least they should (2 Tim 2:3-4). Firstly, they both know that submission equals survival. The wise infantryman always awaits the order to advance—especially when the machine gunner next to him is laying down cover fire. Secondly, both Christians and soldiers know that suffering is par for the course (2 Tim 3:12). Members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), on exercises in the outback, don’t get up in the morning, stretch and declare, “Man, I really miss my flannel pyjamas”. (more…)
Dive into a book
Resource Talk, Sola Panel
“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!”
Putting the ‘media’ into Matthias Media
Resource Talk, Sola Panel
I’ve always loved movies about the movie-making business. (My favourite is The Player starring Tim Robbins.) I particularly like those scenes where the young, green scriptwriter is pitching his movie idea to the fat cat producer: “It’s Pretty Woman meets King Kong; it’s Thelma and Louise meets Blazing Saddles”. And the movie mogul just sits there, puffing on his cigar, and asking, “Yes, but does it have a sex scene?”
The same thing or the new thing
Up front, Sola Panel
I once was sitting with the inestimable David Jackman in an airport, which is where we often seem to meet, and I asked him what the big challenges were, looking ahead for The Proclamation Trust. He paused a moment and then said in his characteristically gentle and mellifluous tone, “You know, I think it’s to keep on doing the same thing we’ve been doing for the past 15 years”. (more…)
Visions of God
Couldn't Help Noticing
All sorts of people have claimed to see visions of God, of Christ, of Mary or of the saints over the centuries. And, from time to time, the Roman Catholic church has endorsed such visions and used them to encourage people in their allegiance to the Roman church. But Martin Luther, the great Reformer and opponent of Roman Catholic teaching, also saw visions— sometimes in considerable detail. Here he describes one such appearing:
(more…)
The Briefing in action
20 years ago in April 1988, our first child was born: a daughter. Like most first-time parents, we had discussed ‘the name’ at length, but almost as soon as we saw her tiny but perfect little frame, we knew what we would call her. She was a gem (and still is). We called her ‘Gemma’. There was another birth in our family in that same month 20 years ago: a little periodical was born. And the name was also a subject of much discussion. We didn’t want to call it anything too fancy or too pretentious, but we didn’t want to call it anything too predictable either. We wanted the name to say something about what the fledgling publication was and wasn’t: it wasn’t a newspaper or news magazine, attempting to report on what was happening in the world (the Christian world or otherwise), and it wasn’t just a special interest magazine for the Christian lifestyle, like Cigar Aficionado or Better Homes and Gardens. We wanted to convey that this new little periodical aimed to inform and equip Christians for life and ministry in God’s world—that its aim was not to entertain or divert, but to inspire action. (more…)
Your welcome
Everyday Ministry
Welcoming is one of those areas in which churches can always improve. Kel Richards talks to Jim Ramsay of Evangelism Ministries about a new resource that aims to help churches do just that.
Against Religion
Couldn't Help Noticing, Life, Sola Panel
They say that everyone has a book inside them, and fortunately, in most cases, it stays there.
Some of us have more than one.
Sons laid down their lives
Thought
Something heartbreaking happened to a family at Black Point at Easter two years ago.
Black Point is an isolated place, accessible only by four-wheel drive, on the south coast of Western Australia, and the Stallard family travelled there to fish. The parents, Ron and Debbie, lived in the south-west of the state, but their two sons, 25-year-old Paul and 19-year-old Andrew, lived in Perth. So the fishing trip was something of a family reunion too.
Is our leadership too professional?
Pastoral Ministry
The avalanche of books, videos and seminars on ‘leadership’ continues at a maddening pace. As seems usual, Christian interest in ‘leadership’ is now catching up to where the world was about twenty years ago. (more…)
Bagging the masons
Couldn't Help Noticing, Life
Is this a new trend in religious advertising? A local newsagent has advertising printed on its paper bags—not so unusual in itself (The Sydney Morning Herald has an ad on one side). But surprisingly the Freemasons have now started advertising in this way. Describing their social responsibility, dedication to charity and community, the organization is encouraging people to inquire, presumably about joining. For a group traditionally shrouded in secrecy, this seems a remarkably public recruitment drive. Next we’ll be hearing details of the secret handshake …
Drugs in the classroom
Review
“Genesis 1:12, sir. ‘God made every seed-bearing plant’.”
The adolescent theologian smirked in triumph. I had to admit he had a point. Didn’t God make all things, including drugs? Weren’t they to be received with thanksgiving? And yet, of course, the suffering caused by drugs is immense, both in terms of numbers of lives affected and within individuals and their families. As one student of mine wrote about the choice to take drugs:
Do as I do
Review
Relational Leadership
Walter C. Wright
Paternoster Press, 2002, 230pp.
Walter Wright has collected a range of helpful leadership wisdom into this book on Christian leadership. The sources he draws upon include secular leadership material, his own experience (which includes over a decade as President of Regent College, Vancouver), and the Bible—in particular Jude, Philemon and Colossians.
The subversive
Life
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.