What has made apostasy such an attractive option these days? It’s like a social contagion. Or a social media contagion at least. Christians wringing their hands about where it all went wrong as yet another celebrity Christian leader (a descriptor I have been unable to source in the original Greek) hits the dirt in a […]
‘ Does your church need a fallow year? Sounds like apostasy in the ears of many church leaders, but the conversations I’ve been having with pastors, other paid leaders and lay people indicates that the idea of a fallow year might not be a bad thing for your church. You know what I mean by […]
You know God’s doing something special when you’re choosing the colour of the ashtrays for the church not the colour of the carpet. Yet here’s Don Warner of Byford Baptist Church, an ordinary congregation of 140 ordinary people in an ordinary suburb in Perth’s ordinary semi-rural fringe, painting coffee tins for the local people, who […]
I first met Steve Addison a decade or so ago when a couple of friends and I were in the early stages of church planting. What struck us most was Steve’s humility and his wise, generous advice to a bunch of rookies starting out. It was a breath of fresh air. Ten years later, Steve’s […]
Which Tim Costello will we get this week? It’s become a bit of a guessing game to wile away the hours. Will it be School Principal Tim Costello, scolding naughty Christians “who need to “suck it up”? Or will it be avuncular Tim Costello, putting a hand on our collective Christian shoulders and going “There, […]
Oh, make me thine forever! And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never Outlive my love for thee. Have you ever thought about the possibility of outliving your love for Jesus? Growing old, but having left Jesus behind in middle age? What would that be like? I was out running this afternoon, a […]
The problem with this photograph, of course, is that it does not look like deconstruction. It does not look like falling away. It does not look like apostasy. It looks like a new Adam about to launch onto a new world. It looks like salvation. And that of course is what it is intended to look […]
Earlier this year I began a new part time venture with City Bible Forum, called Third Space, alongside David Robertson, a pastor, author and broadcaster from Dundee in Scotland who blogs at theweeflea.com. I am staying on two days a week with our church, Providence Church in Perth. David has moved to Sydney with his […]
The two images below were taken a month apart: The launch of Apollo 11 in mid July 1969 on its way to the moon with three astronauts. And this photo taken mid August 1969: Woodstock, August 1969. It’s hard to think of two events so close in time, and location, yet more distant in terms […]
The shooting star that was the Young, Restless Reformed crowd shone brightly as it burned. Brightly and all the quicker for it. And now with the likes of Mark Driscoll seemingly dumping all over Reformed Theology from his land of exile, and Josh Harris dumping his marriage, it certainly feels like what began with a […]
We’ve all heard over the past few years of the move among Nones to start something like church, with all the bells and whistles, talks and coffee, singing and platforms. Something like church but with one small variable – no Jesus. They began to meet in buildings across all the funky cities in the world […]
Phew!! Many an evangelical just let out a huge sigh of relief following yesterday’s definitive exposé of just how right-of-centre Israel Folau’s church group is. Izzy’s just been outed as totally non-kosher in the orthodox Christian world, so we can all get on with ignoring him. Many evangelicals have, no doubt, been praising Jesus (and the […]
Vinyl is back. Back in black. My daughter’s friends bought her a record player last year for her 17th birthday. Why? Because in case you hadn’t heard, vinyl is back. Those big black discs of polyvinyl chloride with one long continuous groove are selling like, er, hit records. Vinyl is back. In a way that […]
Tim Costello is dead right. We’re not being persecuted like Christians around the world and we need to suck it up. I’ve said that for a while now. We’re not getting the level of sheer violence and terror that Christians experience around the globe on a daily basis. But Tim Costello is dead wrong […]
Turns out we’re not going to live as long as we thought we would. Life expectancy in Australia is on the way down. Death expectancy on the other hand… The promise – nay the assertion – a few decades ago that we would soon all live happily and healthily to one hundred, is probably not […]
If only If only If only If only there were someone other than Izzy. Someone not like Izzy who was getting hounded out of his future employment for making a statement about his religious convictions. If only there were some no-name who wasn’t followed in Instagram by thousands, and who wasn’t on social media all […]
The Church tried to conform itself to the world at a moment when the world was becoming uglier. That sentence alone makes the conversation in Catholic journal First Things, between French author and atheist enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq, and Catholic conservative journalist Geoffrey Lejeune, worth the read. It sums up the failed strategy of a […]
The Israel Folau storm has exposed many things, and this is one of them: many ministry workers have little idea of the pressures people face in the modern workplace. They just don’t get it. Not that it stops them making big statements about it. If you’re a Christian ministry worker and you’ve had a lot to […]
I was doing a recovery run the other day, just cruising along the river the morning after a hard effort long run the day before. Stunning Perth winter’s afternoon, not a breeze, not a cloud, nice and cool. Recovery runs are not the time to check your Garmin for pace, in fact you’d be better […]
Just a few posts I’ve written for City Bible Forum recently. I’ve just started working three days per week for City Bible Forum in a new venture called Third Space (so watch this “third” space!). I’ve got the impressive title National Communicator, which just means “keep doing what you’re doing”! I will continue to work […]
So here’s a video from a Scottish public school of a student in a dispute with his teacher which results in him being put out of class for thirty minutes. Oh here we go again, students being rowdy and misbehaving! What’s his crime? Have a watch: pic.twitter.com/Nz0Attx2js — I,Hypocrite (@lporiginalg) June 14, 2019 Go you […]
It was George Burns who is attributed with the razor sharp aphorism: “Sincerity, if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” And working backwards, the key to what makes you in this late modern age is the fake version of sincerity – authenticity. If you can fake that you’ve definitely got it made, and you’re probably […]
It felt like we dodged a bullet. The unexpected electoral result of a few weeks back cleared my calendar. As a board member of a Christian school I was assuming an ALP government wold come to power, a party which had vowed to cut all religious exemptions for Christian schools. And that would mean a […]
