There’s something ugly, something character revealing, about the politician who squeezes absolutely every inch out of their entitlements. Those who make sure that every dollar of those things that they can technically claim is used up, and who spend the time to do so. Every few years there are outcries about some entitlement scandal in […]
It’s the week after Christmas and the post-Christmas saviours are appearing on the TV. Yes, this grey-zone week, when most of us (in mid-summer Australia anyway) can’t figure out what day it is, is the week of the post-Christmas saviour. It’s that time in the secular liturgical calendar ‘twixt December 27th and January 1st, the […]
So used are Christians to hearing that they have to know how their neighbours think or what the worldview of their friends is in order to engage them with the gospel, that it’s easy to forget how little non-Christians understand about what Christians believe. Or how little they even bother trying. It’s easy to forget […]
So there you are minding your own business in the Metaverse, when someone comes alongside you and abuses you for spending too much money on that virtual pair of Nikes you purchased with your Christmas money. It gets so heated that you don’t know where to turn. The rant gets more hostile, almost tempting you […]
Have you see the Christmas 2021 media campaign from Coles grocery chain? It’s beautiful and emotional and joyous. It’s a religious experience which even taps into the whole liturgical idea of Advent, and all without even mentioning Jesus. Pretty smart huh? Truly wonderful. And truly reflective of the generally non-religious – in the traditional sense […]
We’ve all heard stories of wedding fails: smashed cakes, ministers not turning up; grooms not turning up. Perhaps this is one of the worst. Twitter and Jimmy Fallon certainly thought so: When you think it’s all about you, then it’s easy to make it all about you. In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist decides very […]
Tomorrow morning I will get up in the cool of an early Perth Spring morning, throw on shorts, a singlet, a pair of Sauconys, and a Garmin and I will run. And by the time I have run for five minutes I will have clocked my 30,000th kilometre of running on Strava. I am sitting […]
In the Sexular Age, sexual identity trumps everything. All other identities must be subsumed under sexual identity and to stand up against this now results in censure and legal implications. This much is clear from the Eternity newspaper article in which the department of the Attorney General of Victoria was questioned over what rights those […]
When I first saw the article in The Weekend Australian that young men are rushing up to get the big “V”, my initial thoughts were “Good, it’s about time the casual Aussie young bloke who thinks COVID will bypass him, goes and gets vaxed.” But imagine my surprise when I realised that it was not […]
It was a real honour to have Being the Bad Guys awarded Australian Christian Book of the Year last night at the Sparklit Awards. The standard of writing in Australian Christian books is high at the moment, and I think part of that is down to our “distance” from the bigger evangelical platforms. It feels […]
Sam Chan is a colleague of mine at City Bible Forum. He could be a stand up comic, cos he’s super funny. He’s a great evangelist and trainer, and seems to write a book a year. His latest book, co-authored with Malcolm Gill, is Topical Preaching in a Complex World: How to Proclaim Truth and […]
I recently interviewed Tasmanian pastor, and business consultant, Daniel Sih about his award winning book, Spacemakers: How to Unplug, Unwind and think clearly in the Digital Age. Today he guest-posts about an issue we have all been grappling with, how we are shaped by technology… It was just another church service. An elderly man stood […]
When it comes to mainlining conspiracy theories around COVID, I fear that many Christians who have fallen victim to such theories, have doubled down on them more strongly than secularists because they’ve been given a theological reason to be suspicious, as well as a societal one. Simply put, the online secular material available to us […]
The eponymous debut album by the 1970s/80’s new wave band, The Cars, was jokingly referred to as “their greatest hits album”. First outing: every song a banger. The first book by Adam Ramsey takes its cue from that album because every chapter in his just released Truth on Fire: Gazing at God Until Your Heart […]
Australian senior journalist Greg Sheridan has written a compelling book about why Christianity is both true and necessary in our modern world. There are plenty of books written by those in the “Christian Industry” that make a splash in the theological pond, but barely a ripple in the wider world. In other words, Christian bookshops […]
I recently wrote for Solas in the UK, around the issue of “harm” or “dangerous” being the language now employed to describe the Christian framework on sexual ethics, rather than simply “wrong” or “misguided”. It can be quite the challenge for Christians in the workplace who wish to remain faithful to Jesus and to share […]
I just can’t think of two more opposite ways for a man to treat women than the difference between porn and baptism. More to the point men watching porn, and men baptising their ten year old daughters. If you are anything like me, then you would have teared up a bit at the end of […]
Episode 3 of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast was a cracker. An absolute belter. Especially in light of the recent Julie Roys podcasts about Driscoll’s new gig in Arizona which is in implosion mode for all of the same – but seemingly heightened – reasons. And that’s the thing isn’t it? After […]
I have enjoyed the first two episodes of the podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, presented by the excellent Mike Cosper. Enjoyed it in the same way that so many of us enjoyed the secular Serial podcast, which was also about a killer. Think of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill as […]
A dozen or so years ago I worked for an NFP organisation in the education sector that was helping young people at risk of school drop-out to re-engage with education and training. It was conference after conference; training seminar after training seminar. I remember one of these conferences well. Not because it was particularly insightful, […]
Can we just stop it Christians? Can we just stop it? COVID vaccinations are NOT the mark of the Beast. Nor for that matter was your credit card back in the 1970s. Or the ID card that you had to have in the 1980s. Not even your PIN – even if it has three sixes […]
My Dear Lupine I read with interest your recent attempts at luring to their spiritual deaths the human collective (they call it a “church”, but that seems too noble a word for such an unimpressive bunch), you have been assigned. And I must say on the surface it seemed impressive. Suspect theology – heresy as […]
My home town of Perth, Western Australia is a dry place. A very dry place, and it’s gotten drier. When my family first moved to sunny Perth in the 1970s, the long term rainfall average for our city was approximately 850mm per year. Now that sounds okay, and indeed it is more rainfall than London […]
The answer of course, is you. You need to know you the best before you even think about planting a church. If you don’t, you’re heading for a fall. I was asked that question this very morning about what a planter needs to know about the core team, and my answer was simply that. Unless […]
Is the headline intended to be ironic? This is the accompanying photo: I mean, this is Elliot, formerly Ellen Page, and according to the celebratory article, he’s absolutely ripped. Sure is. I mean we can see where the surgeon’s knife absolutely ripped off Page’s breasts, for the sake of, for the sake of, what, exactly? […]
Hint: It’s not because of the worship music. With all the hand-wringing going on about how bad the church is (and that’s just from Christians), it’s time to remind ourselves that so much of what church is, is so good that people envy it. Yes that’s right, “envy”. Here we are in a cottage industry […]
This is a guest blog post from a young Pentecostal pastor in Perth, Joel Seneque, who I have gotten to know these past few years. He’s smart, articulate, well-read theologically, a church planter who wants to see people come to know Jesus, and on top of that he’s a runner! My last post critiqued the […]
I’ve just received yet another article and podcast link from a friend who holds a biblically orthodox view of sexuality. And as I read and listen, I’m beginning to realise that orthodox evangelicals are going to pay the price for the bad theology of some forms of Pentecostalism, particularly its failure to grasp the significance […]
“Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced.” It was the headline you announce after you look at your phone to your still-in-bed spouse early in the morning as various house members are getting up and about and out the door. In the kinda way I said “Kobe Bryant died!” or “Prince Philip died!”. No one […]
So I’m hosting a seminar for a bunch of pastors overseas who have been reading my book Being the Bad Guys. Sales seem to be going well. There have been a lot of positive reviews, and more importantly, many, many comments from people contacting me to say that I have been able to articulate what […]
Paul is not a painting we look at and wish we could be like; rather he is a window to the awesome rescuing grace of the Redeemer. Leader pride produces personality cults, while leader humility stimulates worship of God. I love that quote about the Apostle Paul from Paul Tripp’s excellent book: Lead: 12 Gospel […]
In shock news, Judas Iscariot, one of the insiders of the nascent Jesus movement has walked away from the faith. The other disciples, who were those closest to him, didn’t pick it at the time, but noted afterwards that there were signs Judas was concerned about the direction Jesus was taking. Sounds kinda silly writing […]
I’m a Strava junkie. I check it every day. You know Strava yeah? If you’re a runner, cyclist or triathlete, it’s the go-to app/website to upload your training. Strava is the social network for athletes. I put up my runs everyday on Strava. My hard training. My intervals. My long slow runs. My heart rate […]
One thing that struck me reading the 31:8 safeguarding review of now-disgraced Anglican leader, Jonathan Fletcher, was the observation that Fletcher had his interns or ministry apprentices wash his car or mow his lawn. Why did it strike me? Because that was my observation of another leader who has been caught up in an abuse […]
I am attending a 21st birthday party tonight. I don’t get to so many of those these days. Usually fiftieths, funerals, and weddings of those younger than me who know me through church. It’s the 21st birthday of my god-daughter’s younger brother. The third child of four in an Italian family. The whole extended family […]
In this brave new world of post-Christian sexual ethics, even among Christians, I am not sure what counts as a disordered love any longer. Well, maybe I am, but more of that later. Calvin University Professor, James KA Smith, whose work interpreting Augustine’s moral and spiritual frameworks for post-moderns has rightly been hailed as groundbreaking, […]
As far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our sins from us. Psalm 103:12 That’s the message of the Bible at least. The message of our modern culture that spent about three decades telling us that God could not possibly be a God of judgement?: As far as the […]
The following transcript was recently handed to stephenmcalpine.com by an eponymously named source. Stephenmcalpine.com does not vouch for the veracity of the transcript, but was, nevertheless, impressed with the wisdom, insight and sheer daring-do of the eponymously named source. The leaking of this revealing document s comes just one day after this report in The […]
My twin brother put it well yesterday in light of Facebook’s decision to remove all Australian news content (including my blog?) from its feed. Zuckerberg isn’t immoral – he’s amoral. Which isn’t perhaps as much a moral declaration about Zuckerberg as much as it is an observation about him. Ok, I know the brilliant The […]
I read the RZIM public announcement about Ravi Zacharias today, followed by a Vanity Fair expose of the fallout from Carl Lentz at Hillsong New York. Sad and sobering. Sad for those victims of Ravi and for those who were swept up in Carl’s very expensive designer train. Sad too that there is often so […]
This weekend it is one year exactly since The Christianity Today article was published that brought about the end of the public ministry of Steve Timmis, former CEO of Acts29 and founder of The Crowded House network of churches in the UK. I played no small part in that article’s creation, although Timmis had been […]
If I’d written in my new book Being the Bad Guys that education materials would soon be sent to churches by a government in Australia to tell them how they are permitted to talk about sexuality matters to avoid prosecution, I would have been laughed at. Yet that is what the Victorian Government has just […]
My book is out. I am not. My book Being the Bad Guys was released yesterday, Feb 1st, while ironically everyone in Perth where I live was placed into lockdown due to a huge outbreak of COVID (one person). We have a treadmill so I can still run, but we get an hour outside, so […]
And now they’re all lining up to hand back their gongs. It’s a veritable gong conga line. And now the church is getting in on the act too. Or at least one part of the church here in Australia. A senior cleric in the Uniting Church has handed back his Order of Australia in protest […]
Another year another Margaret Court story. The furore around the tennis great receiving a national award for community services (via her church Victory Life in Perth running a large food distribution program) on Australia Day, will ensure that anyone nominated from now one will have the sexual gloryometer run over them first, just to make […]
Eternity News’ Ben McEachen interviewed me about my new book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live For Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t You can read it at the link below. FWIW I think Ben gets the tone I am trying to get across. It seems important in a time in which […]
TGC Australia’s Andrew Moody interviewed me about my forthcoming book “Being the Bad Guys” recently. It all happened before the US shenanigans of last week, but it’s interesting how in our discussion we speak about how the church needs to move forward in these times. If you’re interested in a copy you can go to […]
A couple of Christmases ago I was accosted at the end of the service by a local pastor whose church was not holding a Christmas service. Not physically accosted, just verbally, so let’s not blow this thing up. But it got a bit too grinchy for my Christmas Day, and I veer towards the grinchy […]
How come my friends in Glasgow were poor but they gave me their stuff, but my friends in Perth are rich and they sell me their stuff? A few months into our new life in Perth in 2012 our 10 year old made that astute observation. Now, almost 9 years into our life in Perth […]
Just when we thought we had reached peak stupid with the manner in which many right-leaning Christians in the US were viewing the Messiah, er, I mean the President, we find out that there is indeed another summit beyond the lofty clouds of a Democrat in the White House. Rep Emanuel Cleaver, an ordained minister […]
Okay, so last week I gave five reasons not to buy my book and the reverse psychology seems to have worked (evil genius that I am). So today I am going to pitch you five reasons why you should buy my book. If you don’t already know, it comes out Feb 1st and I am […]
So my book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t officially comes out in a month – Feb 1st. And I can’t wait. Hey, maybe you can’t wait either. Not that you have to. From what I hear, anyone who pre-ordered it a month ago from […]
This week – this past Sunday in fact – we left our beloved Providence Church network after a decade of life and ministry in a church setting that morphed from three households and thirty six people, to three churches (one starting in a month) with five congregations and some 500 people. And it’s painful to […]
It’s been the year of evangelical exposures. I have grown weary of opening social media or an online journal and reading of yet another trainwreck in “Big Eva”. I finished this year as I began it, as a guest on the podcast of the admirable Julie Roys, a US Christian independent journalist who has been […]
While I think there have been some fantastic Christian responses to what is going on in the world throughout 2020, it’s certainly been the year of what I call “Grinchianity”. Grinchianity – a peculiar form of Christianity which is suspicious of everything (think COVID19, tracking apps, masks, anyone not voting a certain way), seems to […]
Every year my run club hands out a perpetual trophy called The Black Toenail Award. It’s for the club’s best performer during the racing season, and throughout 2020 that trophy has sat proudly on my bookcase. Why black toenail you ask? Because as every runner knows, the constant pounding of your toes into the front […]
Life’s been busy. Our church has been searching for a new senior pastor so that process has taken up a lot of my time. I’m also in the throes of writing PR articles for the promotion of my book, Being The Bad Guys, which you can pre-order here if you are in Australia, here in […]
Ellen Page, the brilliant young star of Juno, The X-Men franchise, and lately the Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy, is now Elliot Page, having announced that she is trans. I say “she” advisedly, as Page has now offered the preferred pronouns of “they/he” to the world to use. Elliot Page has presented to the world, […]
I’ve been speaking for City Bible Forum’s Bible Shots in Sydney. Well I’ve been Zooming in as we can’t leave the state of Western Australia at the moment to go to NSW without being pinged with a two week quarantine on the way back. The series is called You Do You, and each week I […]
Here’s some stuff from me in my role at Third Space, as well as some other articles worth having a read of, including a superb essay by former SAS soldier, Federal Politician, and a friend of mine, Andrew Hastie. First up, David Robertson and me with another The Kitchen Table, discussing the idea of whether […]
From tomorrow in the state of Victoria in Australia, all that you will have to do to become badder guys than you are today is to stay exactly where you are. Don’t shift in your thinking around biblical sexual ethics. Don’t move. Just stay orthodox and let the Victorian Government Legislation do the shifting for […]
My book, “Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t” can be pre-ordered now. Here’s a short video giving the intel on what it’s about: Preorders in the US here Preorders in the UK here Preorders in Australia here
The Culture War threatening to tear the West apart has become guerrilla warfare. Once confined to demarcated battlefields such as university settings and political houses, in which all of the combatants were recognised soldiers, it is now being fought street fighting door to door, house to house. And increasingly dining table to dining table, family […]
If pastors and other Christian ministry workers were left in any doubt as to whether any orthodox teaching on sexuality is being targeted by bans on conversion therapy in Australia, they could look no further than this recent article from the ABC. As the force of the article shows, the target of governments like Dan […]
I put this comment up on Facebook this week and it seemed to resonate: With Biden set to win his declaration that there will be no red or blue states, just a United States is noble and irenic. But misplaced nonetheless. The divisions in the US (around the West for that matter) are deeper than […]
Well by the time you are being threatened with sexual violence, your home has been graffitied, and your wife has been forced to shut down her Instagram account, you may begin to wonder whether life in the public square is for you. Well that’s just what has happened to the newly minted Perth Lord Mayor, […]
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy With apologies to the great Russian writer, this statement at the start of his masterpiece Anna Karenina gets it exactly the wrong way around. There is in fact a depressing sameness about unhappy families and the fall-out that results from this […]
It feels like the end of a Scooby Doo episode. An unmasking of sorts. Later this afternoon, Perth Australia time, a report will be released by the remaining elders of The Crowded House network in Sheffield UK. The report, commissioned by those elders, and carried out by the national safeguarding review organisation in the UK, […]
My favourite theological college lecturer tells of the time he was doing his PhD at Durham University when he was asked to preach on Romans at his local church. Slightly rushed, slightly distracted he said “Yes”. So on the Sunday he dutifully got up to preach. He scanned the crowd and there sitting waiting to […]
US Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry might have sparkled with Markle in a sermon about love, but he’s just given curry to William Love, the bishop who refused to allow his diocese to preside over same sex marriages. William Love has resigned as bishop rather than take his Albany diocese through a long and protracted legal […]
Is this the official version? A good friend of mine who I run with regularly, recently PM-ed me that question in relation to this picture: Turns out her daughter is fascinated with her Noah story book. Turns out a lot of other kids are too, (along with books about dinosaurs). There are heaps of great […]
Last night my editor from The Good Book Company contacted me to say that the book I have been writing has gone to the printers. Whoop whoop! And it’s ready to pre-order if you want to do that. The title? Being the Bad Guys: How to Live For Jesus in a World that Says You […]
The decision by Lotterywest to reject a grant application to assist the community outreach food program at tennis legend Margaret Court’s church on the basis of its public stance on same sex marriage, is not really all that surprising. Although Court herself is disappointed. Why is it not surprsing? Because it’s a sign of the […]
The mental health tsunami that we are experiencing in this COVID-era world in Australia was not so much caused by the virus, as revealed by it. Just as a tsunami runs for hundreds of kilometres in deep water without drawing too much attention to itself, before piling up in a huge wave as it reaches […]
When the comments section in The Times of London about the latest craziness (Trump having COVID) contains this thread … … you know we’re in for interesting times. An evangelical Christian is worse than an amoral, “do whatever it takes” President. “Not a good look“! Hmm. And that’s in The Times, which generally weeds out […]
“Participation in sport is a human right” With that, quite frankly ludicrous, quote the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, welcomed the announcement by nine elite sports bodies in Australia, to the inclusion of trans athletes in their elite team should they meet the standard. (Oh and should their testosterone levels be low enough at […]
The debate proved without a shadow of a doubt that Trump versus Biden was Goliath versus Goliath. Not that both men proved to be a giant for their side, or indeed a champion of anything. The debate was abysmal. It was Goliath versus Goliath because both men employ the tactics of the Philistines at war. […]
Here’s a thought: What if the church wasted the COVID crisis? And I’m not simply talking about church preference. Nor am I talking about don’t simply talk about what the better model for evangelism, mission and pastoral care might be. I’m talking about whether we wasted an opportunity to prepare ourselves for a far more […]
I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, all of them are misty, a chasing after the wind. (Ecclesiastes 1:14) Windy. It was going to be windy. The forecast ten days out from Marathon#6, with me in the form of my life going into it, and it was going to be […]
Flying. Remember that? I flew a lot in 2019 for my job, mostly interstate within Australia (which admittedly is a big place), but also some international flights. And on Virgin flights my seat of choice was 8C. A Goldilocks seat. Not too far forward. Not too far back.Just right. And an aisle seat so that […]
When it comes to trusting science to guide decisions around sexuality, progressively minded governments around Australia have a lot in common with anti-vaxxers. Form your narrative first, decide where you want this thing to land, and then search for the “science” to back up your clearly unsustainable position. In other words, ignore the science and […]
The Brisbane-born pastor who is facing calls for his deportation from the UK back to Australia, over his public comments praising the cancellation of the Cornwall Pride event on a public Facebook page event has acted unwisely. If Josh Williamson is deported – which seems an unlikely scenario – then he should give some time […]
There’s an incredible, and moving, scene in the second series of Netflix‘s wayward superheroes comic book adaption, The Umbrella Academy. One of the superpower family of the academy, Allison Hargreeves, who is lauded in 2019 as a successful Hollywood black actor, is transported from New York to early 1960’s Dallas. She walks into a cafe. […]
Where are they now? X-Gens once trawled their old yearbooks wondering what their class mates were up to, and asking themselves, “Did I ever look that young?” Now of course, X-Gens just cut to the chase and stalk their old classmates on Facebook, ramping up the creepy and dialling down the mystery. Fatter, older, balder. […]
So Adele decided to put her hair in Bantu knots, and wear a Jamaican flag bikini for the annual Notting Hill Carnival in London. And sent Twitter into meltdown. Not because she’s skinny now. Not because she’s put on weight now. No, those things are so pre-COVID-19 outrages over Adele. This time it was for […]
I”ve been a little busy recently with other work stuff, so not as much blog posting with material specifically for stephenmcalpine.com. But I do have some stuff from my Third Space musings, and will be posting in the future around the trend away from city living (a series that I started last week about the […]
Remember the good old days when the likes of Target and Walmart were being hounded by both sides of the political spectrum for sexualising young girls with their ranges of hot pants and crop tops? For one side it was the industrial capitalist machine at work, pulling out all stops at making a buck. For […]
Reports of the suburb’s death are greatly exaggerated. The suburbs of the western nations have long been the whipping boys of many a book, many a play or movie, many a church planting conference. And many a city dweller. The suburbs are where you went to die, if not physically, then certainly spiritually, as Dave […]
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