Forget the furore over the “Easter worshippers versus Christian” Tweets by the former US President Barak Obama, and the former (soon to be again?) Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, about the Sri Lankan bombings. It’s the lack of any social media comment by the up and coming star of the Democrats in the US that is […]
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When The Silence Is As Deafening As the Explosions
It’s a terrible way for it to happen, but with the awful scenes in Colombo overnight, Christian persecution just got its moment in the sun for 2019. And the manner in which it is being reported for what it is – a terrorist attack aimed predominantly, though not exclusively, at Christians -, makes it pretty […]
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Mockery
I was struck today reading the Luke account of Jesus’ trial and death. A key feature of that dreadful day was mockery. Yes there was torture, betrayal and crucifixion. And they are terrible, terrible things. And in that context mockery may seem a minor thing. But not to the Gospel writer: The men who were […]
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A French Evangelical’s Thoughts on Notre Dame
On a small number of occasions my very good French friend, Daniel Szabo, – who is that rare breed; an evangelical Christian in France, – has written a blog post for me. I asked him to write this one after he told me yesterday that, although he lived in Paris many years, he almost never […]
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All This Useless Beauty
Paris, and the world, lost something more than a wonderful piece of ecclesiastical history and architecture overnight. It lost yet another link with a transcendent past, that was once so usefully beautiful. French writer Guy de Maupassant, and decidedly 20th century singer-poet Elvis Costello, label, both have written works called Useless Beauty, or as in Costello’s case, […]
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Sexular Colonialism
If my male, pale and stale heart could be warmed, it would be so by the growing realisation that the baton of colonialism, long the historic burden of the conservative, Christianised West, can now been handed to the woke Left in our culture. The evidence is coming in in spades. The progressive narrative has created, […]
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Who Would You Be Embarrassed To Be Seen Having Coffee With?
There was a picture of Israel Folau and his wife having coffee on the streets of Sydney yesterday with a group of people. But don’t worry. Those people were representatives of the Australian Rugby Union having a stern word with him, so no one was actually putting their cultural credibility on the line by being […]
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Transgender Activism’s Spotlight Moment
Well, this could well be transgender activism’s “Spotlight” moment. You may remember Spotlight, that fantastic Hollywood movie named after the journalistic investigation team at the Boston Globe newspaper. Through methodical research, the Spotlight team at the Globe uncovered the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in the United States in the early 2000s, pushing […]
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Trendcendence
Trendcendence: [trend-sen-duh ns] Noun: The quality or state of trending that ushers in a sense of transcendence. Okay, so I made that word up – it’s a neo-logism – but bear with me. We live, publicly at least, in an avowedly secular world. Living in a material world and we are material girls, boys, or a […]
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What Are We to Make of the Muslim Call to Prayer Going Out Over the New Zealand Airwaves?
There has been much discussion about the decision by the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinta Arden, to arrange for the Muslim call to prayer to go out over the airwaves of national radio today, followed by two minutes silence. And all this in light of the atrocities in Christchurch last week. On the surface it […]
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Banning The Lord’s Prayer in Parliament: Round 23
So we’ve got another round of banning the Lord’s Prayer or reacting to banning the Lord’s Prayer in a Parliament somewhere in Australia. You can read about it here on the ABC site. What’s that? The 23rd attempt in five years? I kinda feel comforted by this sort of thing. Mainly because of its regularity. […]
Recent Posts
Interview on Human Potential Podcast
I was interviewed for a secular podcast, Human Potential, but a great bloke from Sydney, Oliver Freer. I was in Sydney for a day or so a few weeks back so we caught up and he asked a bunch of great questions, including about what it means to be a man well into the second […]
No people, this is NOT what you get for mixing Islam with the West.
In the wake of the terrible events in the Christchurch mosques just today, could Christians of a certain persuasion stop writing things on Facebook along the lines of “This is what you get for mixing Islam in the West.”? Yep, I saw that within a few minutes of the announcement of the shooting, but strangely […]
Ground Zero: Orthodoxy and Evangelism in a Post-Pell World
There is September 10th 2001. There is September 12th 2001. And an awful lot changed in the middle. Things could not, and patently have not, gone back to the way they were before those Twin Towers came tumbling down. So too here in Australia there is the day before the lifting of the suppression order […]
OJ Simpson’s Gloves Versus Cardinal Pell’s Robes
Remember the glove? Remember the glove that didn’t fit? If you’re old enough to remember the OJ Simpson trial, the so called trial of the century in the US back in 1994, you’ll remember the glove that didn’t fit. OJ – the Juice – the famous footballer, was on trial for the murder of his […]
A Long Time Between Haircuts
The last time I went for a haircut was back in 1994. A quarter of a century ago. I remember it well, even if at the time I didn’t know it would be the final one for 25 years. Italian Catholic bloke in his late fifties called Tony in Wesley Arcade Perth. Slicked back balding […]
Making Bricks For Evangelical Pharaohs
I worry that an awful lot of modern day ministry is about making bricks for evangelical pharaohs. Whether those pharaohs are actual people, or whether they are systems and philosophies of ministry that have been put in place, doesn’t matter all that much; making bricks is the paradigm of much modern ministry. And it’s leaving […]
Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow and Only You Had Ever Heard of Jesus
Imagine waking up and only you had heard of The Beatles. That’s the conceit behind the latest movie from director Danny “SlumDog Millionaire” Boyle and screenwriter Richard “Love Actually” Curtis, Yesterday. Yesterday is shaping up to be the feel-good movie of the coming northern summer, in which a talented, but spectacularly unsuccessful musician, Jack Malik, wakes […]
Matisha’s Throne of Grace
When Matisha moved into the retirement apartment next to my Mum last year, things got ugly. Very ugly. Very quickly. Matisha took an instant dislike to Mum. Only my Mum. All the other residents she was fine with. Chatted with them. Spent time with them But there was something about Mum that she took an […]
What Johan Cruyff Could Teach Pastors (And Everyone Else) About Identity and Purpose
Dutchman Johan Cruyff was perhaps the greatest footballer/soccer player ever. Brazil’s Pele might pip him in some polls; George Best was a brief shining superstar. But as the leader of the Ajax FC and Dutch teams’ “total football” approach in the 1970s, plus a glittering playing and coaching career with the famous FC Barcelona, Cruyff, […]
Six Thoughts After Six Years of a Public Church Plant
Six years ago today, after several months of meeting as two household groups, our church, Providence Church Midland, decided to do a public gathering every fortnight, and household on the other weekend. We rented an old building in Midland, the old Midland bank: About thirty or so of us turned up (no visitors despite a […]