So what’s the biggest damage being done to the church? Is it from the “out there” Sexular Age, or the internal abuse that we see played out in so many sad ways. External or internal? What’s more likely to burn us down if we’re not careful? Well, as the taco shell girl says when faced […]
Kate Forbes stands little chance of becoming the First Minister of Scotland. And this is due to her publicly stated religious beliefs. You can’t blame her for being honest. It’s kinda refreshing to watch that level of dishonesty from my vantage point in Australia, where already there are so many up in arms around the […]
I like Martyn Iles, the now-former MD of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL). I would consider him an ally in the gospel, and increasingly a good acquaintance/friend. Martyn’s services have now been terminated, and it has, apparently, much to do with the direction he was taking the organisation in. If anyone has any secret sauce […]
I was speaking to a Chinese ministry worker in Sydney last week who told me that when a pastor is released from prison in mainland China, his church community does the exact opposite of what would be expected, especially in an honour/shame culture such as China. Instead of skulking out by a side door to […]
It was never going to stop at redefining marriage. I think we all knew that. For a while there every second article in every second mainstream media news outlet’s lifestyle or relationships section was about gay marriage. But with Valentine’s Day coming up, things have moved on. And moved on apace. Now every second article […]
I jumped into a taxi last week to get to the airport. It was super early, still dark and no chance of a lift from any member of the family (it was 4:30am after all). It’s just a twelve to fifteen minute drive to the airport from my house. It’s nice and handy for the […]
If anyone was under any illusions that there would be a “live and let live” attitude from the purveyors of the Sexular Age, then the recommendations of The Australian Law Reform Commission, in terms of how Christian schools should be able to staff themselves, will dispel such illusions. It’s quite a depressing first-up read. Make […]
The UK TV series HUMANS (the A” is upside down) from a few years ago was a cracking insight into the world of AI, in a near future UK setting. Humanoids are synthetics or “synths” as they are known, and they have been created that are remarkably real, and they do the bulk of the […]
We had a staycation this year for our summer holiday. In recent years we’ve meandered south of Perth a couple of hundred kilometres to the more temperate part of the state, and done the beaches, restaurants and wineries in a milder summer than Perth will receive. This year though, fed up with two years of […]
It’s six years ago today since I conducted my father’s funeral. A bittersweet experience to be sure. Dunno where that time went. But here’s the thing, I’m at that age where the dads of so many of my friends are dying. offhand I can think of five recently, In fact I am starting to count […]
With the death of Pope Benedict XVI the Roman Catholic Church lost one of its great intellectuals. Not merely of recent years, but across the centuries. He truly was an amazing man with an amazing mind. His understanding of the cultural pressures those of faith face today was equally great. He saw the enervating nature […]
So I was scrolling Facebook when I got this message: Wow! You mean like, completely caught up? Well, for now at least. But hang on a minute, it’s telling us that ‘Something went wrong”. You’ve completely caught up for now, because something went wrong. In other words, we need to keep you chasing something. If […]
Nearly three years ago, right before the pandemic locked down my home state and there were more important things to worry about, I wrote about the case of a Western Australian couple who had been rejected as short term foster carers by a government funded adoption agency. You can read that article here. The case […]
If there’s one thing we know as Christians is that we won’t always get vindicated in this age. The slurs and opprobrium may well stick this side of the Parousia, and we know that there have been millions of Christians who have suffered greatly for the sake of the gospel, including the loss of their […]
So here’s me choosing my Christian Word Of The Year. Drum roll please, “The Christian word of the year is WINSOME!” Taa-dah! That’s right, winsome! It’s everywhere you look at the moment. So please step forward “winsome” and take a bow. You’ve been over-used, over-realised, under-appreciated, over-stated, undered and overed, and whatever else can happen […]
The voluntary assisted dying (VAD) push in Australia is set to win the aesthetics of the ethical war, as it inevitably does elsewhere. And the latest stoush with the Catholic Church over comments by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, who warned that the last rites may be withheld from those who undertake VAD has ramped up […]
Australian author and church leader Al Stewart has done us a great service with his book The Manual: Getting Masculinity Right. The subtitle says it all. A lot’s been wrong with masculinity. Or perhaps a lot has been said to be wrong about masculinity. Or perhaps it’s both. Al’s book cuts through the toxic masculinity […]
In my latest DeLorean Philosophy podcast I explore the ramifications (or some of them at least) of the dramatic drop in adherence to Christianity in England and Wales. Just as with the latest Australian census data, the equivalent in the UK shows a big decline in adherence, (the low-bar default position), while there’s been a […]
The Nick Cave concert that Jill and I went to last night was a spiritual experience. And I use that term advisedly. I also use it in light of the fact that the review of the concert by our local newspaper also made the same connection. Have a look at the header above. The term […]
It was this line that got me. In a shocking article in The Sydney Morning Herald today, sexual safety educator, Maree Crabbe made this statement: “Young people speak about ‘choking’, external pressure to the throat, being so incredibly mainstream that its almost vanilla now, that it’s considered to be a normal part of a sexual […]
In one of the greater insights into the national Australian psyche, famed expat cultural commentator, Clive James, made this statement about his fellow Aussies: “The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers.” In other words, as much […]
We went to our newly renovated local pub/hotel last night after work for a meal and a drink, and to check out what is a stunning renovation of an almost 100 year old building. It’s the Bassendean Hotel, about ten minutes walk from our house. It used to be fairly downtrodden and tired, but after […]
Tim Keller once posited a question along these lines: Why is it that so many young church-going people lose their faith within a term or so of going to college? They attend church growing up, youth group, parachurch camps etc. They do the whole Christian young person thing. But one semester into university, they come […]
One of the key features in the church is that you get to see the battle between orthodoxy and heterodoxy (the move away from orthodoxy) played out in real time. In every generation. Sure there are always different issues coming to the fore, depending often on what the cultural pressure is doing. Heterodox views always […]
Essendon’s CEO-for-a-day Andrew Thorburn has engaged with lawyers and is reserving the right to sue the Essendon Football Club. Perhaps you’re wondering why the bloke who wrote “Being the Bad Guys” thinks we should be pushing back. Aren’t we supposed to be like Jesus? Isn’t our stance towards the hardening secular world not to assert […]
If you haven’t read Tara Isabella Burton’s book Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, you must. It’s an exceptional socio-cultural exploration of the shift in the West away from institutional religion to what she terms (and it’s a self-explanatory great term), intuitional religion. Yes that’s right. Just as with my term “A Sexular […]
Let me tell you about a pastoral ministry fail of mine. A small one, nothing major, but, in hindsight, a fail nonetheless. It has to do with Kurt Cobain. Or at least it has to do with his death. I remember the day that Kurt Cobain died. Many of my generation do. My generation is […]
The latest episode has just dropped. You can find it here. We’re exploring the increasing level of suspicion and hostility towards orthodox Christian views on sexuality and gender. Send it to a friend.
In a disturbing new development in the religious bigotry scandal in Australia, evangelical Christians have taken to wearing casual clothes in order to “fit in.” While there have been reports in the past of this fundamentalist cohort wearing stylish clothes, though usually about four months after the general populace has moved on to another fashion […]
Am I using a boxing analogy? Yes, but I’ve been saying it’s Babylon all along, and not Athens. If anyone thinks that is not the case, then Kochie’s interview of City on a Hill’s Guy Mason on the Sunrise show yesterday morning – and I use the term “interview” advisedly -, didn”t sound much like […]
It’s been a breathless 24 hours. Essendon CEO, Andrew Thorburn was barely in the job a day and then he resigned. And lots of media and social media flurry around it all. I’ve obviously had a bit to say on it, but while the virtual ink is still a bit damp on my previous posts, […]
Sometimes I just get weary of Christians who say that if we were only winsome enough in the public square then we could be up front Christians and take our place in meaningful corporate roles with no pushback. As if we never are winsome. And as if winsome is even a strategy that will stave […]
Well you can say what you like about the new Essendon CEO, Andrew Thorburn and his bigoted hate-filled ideas around sexuality (The ever irenic Premier of Victoria’s, Dan Andrews’, descriptors not mine), but rest assured he won’t be pressuring the club’s indigenous players to get their partners to have abortion for the good of the […]
I had the sweet opportunity to have a long chat with a “baby Christian” the other week at a church gathering. Standing outside on the lawn in the warm sun, live music in the background, a long conga line waiting in the food queue beside me, I was introduced to a woman in her thirties […]
Hi folks (and apologies for those who received an earlier (broken) link. I am pleased to say that the Undeceptions podcast stable has seen fit to ask me to produce a series of 14 podcasts called Delorean Philosophy. The idea behind the series is, as with Back to the Future, take a glimpse as to […]
It’s all about having “the edge” isn’t it? In elite sport it’s all about having the edge over your opponents. Elite sport is determined not even by the one-percenters, but by the tenth-of-a-one-percenters. Non-elites don’t understand “the edge”. We line up on a local running race with all sorts of types and body shapes and […]
For one brief day the world was porous again. For one brief day we recognised that the invisible world still leaks into the visible. For one brief day – perhaps one final day – transcendence was admitted into the public square in the modern Western world, and we all stood and acknowledged it. For one […]
I was 55 yesterday. For a change I did not feel slightly depressed or super reflective on my birthday. I think that since my brush with serious illness at 42 years of age I have watched and metered every year out carefully. Birthdays are houses of parties, and I am often aware of the house […]
There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning. John Piper One of the recurring problems that Facebook throws up is “whataboutism”. You know what I mean by […]
Today, the Queen met the King. Today, the Queen, who had so often heard the term “Your Majesty” spoken to her, would have spoken them to someone else. The one true King. I am away from home travelling interstate and I woke to some messages from friends in the UK that simply said “Big news […]
Hey Christian, are you in danger of quiet quitting your faith? You know what quiet quitting is, don’t you? Quiet quitting is a response to the “bring your whole self to work” mantra. Employees are saying “Enough is enough!, I’m going to do as much work as I need to to get by in the […]
Desiring God‘s recent blog post by Greg Morse about beards and their theological significance – nay, their desirability to demonstrate God-given manliness – seems like a pretty close shave towards patriarchy if you ask me. It’s time for some bald facts. I am not sure why Desiring God had to become Desiring Beard. It feels […]
Despite the temptation to label the misogynistic, abusive and downright dangerous attitudes towards women held by Andrew Tate as “Neanderthal”, his views are quite modern. Very modern actually. Perhaps you’ve never heard of Tate. Well google him. He’s a US/Brit celebrity who was once kicked off Britain’s Big Brother when a video of him beating […]
Here’s what really ticks off Christians seeking to live faithful lives in workplaces that are aggressively pushing the Sexular Age onto their employees. They get tired of people whose lives inhabit the sheltered workshop of fulltime pastoral ministry telling them that if they’d only spend more time being like Jesus in terms of compassion, justice, […]
I’ve always considered Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan to be the Costco version of his hyper progressive Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews. Mr McCosto. That’s what I’m gonna call him. A bit cheaper, a bit more populist. But hey, it is Perth after all! Riding a wave of separatist sentiment during the COVID wave meant that […]
Happy birthday George Jetson! According to disputed records, George was destined to be born in 2022, and some say – with little evidence – that the date was 31st July. If that is the case then he’s now a full week and bit old, and giving his mother sleepless nights with his disturbed circadian rhythm. […]
I love this photograph. Ollie Hoare of Australia has just taken down a world class field in the 2022 Commonwealth Games 1500m, breaking his PB and the longstanding Commonwealth Games record in doing so. The first Aussie to take the title since the great Herb Elliott more than sixty years ago. I’m a big Ollie […]
Aussie comedian Carl Barron has a funny set in which he laments the fact that he sent his old girlfriend crazy. In fact, as he goes on to say, she started hallucinating because of him. And he’s got the evidence to prove it. As he recounts it, she came home one day and said “Carl […]
It is a false dichotomy to declare that the seven Manly players who are refusing to wear the Pride jersey this week for their National Rugby League match (thereby scrubbing them from playing), are being hypocritical because they have had no problems wearing betting and alcohol logos on the same jersey. Yet I have seen […]
I guess when you’ve cut God out of the equation as most of the mainstream media has these days, then it’s newsworthy when the ex Prime Minister tells Christians not to put their trust in governments. But oh the shock and surprise in the media that what ex-PM Scott Morrison told Margaret Court’s Victory Life […]
I’m on holidays. Enjoying them too. But okay, it needed something big to celebrate my 1000th blog post, so here’s a link to my recentThird Space post on the James Webb telescope. 1000 blog posts. There have been some stars, but some real black holes there too. But I kinda like it this one! Here’s […]
In the wake of the Australian census, in which huge swathes of Aussies declared for the first time that they have “no religion”, comes a whole bunch of articles that explore how that doesn’t mean people are not good just because they are post religious. And it makes for an interesting insight into the mind […]
This is the photo that, ironically, proved that there was still a yuck factor among even the most ardent pro-choice advocates. That somehow, despite the one-way street of post-Christian Western ideologies, we haven’t jettisoned everything. Culturally we’re not completely inhuman. Not yet at least. One day until full term (and with another child in tow […]
The 2021 census stats are out, and it’s official (again): Australian Christianity is in freefall decline. As The Australian newspaper reports: The number of Australians who aren’t religious has almost doubled over the decade, with almost 40 per cent indicating in the latest census that they have no religious belief. The Australian Bureau of Statistics […]
One of my favourite Youtubers is former multiple US 800m champion, two times Olympian and World Championships silver medallist, Nick Symmonds, also known as “The Bison” for his muscular frame and galloping kick at the end of a race. Symmonds has carved out a great second career after elite athletics, with a hugely informative and […]
Of all the great stories told over the past few weeks during the 70th Jubilee celebrations of the Queen, the most memorable, and funniest, is told by the head of her security detail. He recounts that one time when the Queen was in her 80s, he and she were picnicking in the countryside near Balmoral, […]
I watched the Ricky Gervais Netflix special SuperNature the other week on the plane home from Sydney. Flights to Sydney from Perth are four hours of work. Flights home from Sydney to Perth are five hours (yes five, thank you ornery jet stream), in which brain mush means I watch downloaded series of something, cos […]
I am going to sit on a plane for four hours tomorrow and devour Mark Sayers’ new book: A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders. I will do so not more than 36 hours after the Australian Federal election result that led to a change […]
John Dickson’s Undeceptions podcast is undoubtedly the best Christian podcast in Australia in terms of content, production values, and breadth. It also has that elusive ingredient; the ability to take crunchy, high fibre material and break it down into manageable, masticable morsels. I must confess I have come to listening to it later in the […]
The best TV show ever (no correspondence will be entered into), was The Wire, a five series multi-faceted diamond first uncovered in 2004. It began the era of the golden age of television, and indeed it set the standard for what was to follow (The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc, etc). The Wire is set in […]
This is Aaron. Aaron Patrick. Christians, when it comes to engaging someone who is not a Christian, don’t be like Aaron. In fact, be the opposite of Aaron. Aaron Patrick is a senior correspondent for the Australian Financial Review – a major national newspaper in Australia (equivalent of the UK’s The Financial Times). He specialises […]
The biggest curse in leadership – whether that’s private, civil or in church, is to be decent, but dull. That’s the only conclusion we can reach when we read comments such as this in The Times, critiquing the UK Labour Opposition’s parliamentary leader, Sir Keir Starmer: Voters may be turning away from the Tories but […]
Tim Keller – a personal favourite of mine over the years – has recently tweeted a response to a First Things article by James R. Wood entitled: How I Evolved on Tim Keller. In his article Wood makes this assertion, that while Keller’s winsome apologetic approach worked in a kinder, gentler time, things have moved […]
A week or so back I read an article in the national media that was almost incredulous that the issue of trans athletes should be considered a topic worthy of our federal election. Both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader had been quizzed as to their views on transwomen taking part in female-only sport. […]
It was one of those serendipitous moments. There, advertised on the Facebook page of a friend from my old days at Fremantle Assemblies of God church in the mid 1980s, was the kitchen table and chair set we had been looking for. My friend was married to another friend from my even older days at […]
People are planting flowers in Kyiv. Spring is coming. In the midst of all the chaos, horror and death that the Russian invasion has inflicted on Kyiv, there is something beautiful about people planting flowers in wartorn Kyiv. As The Times reports, in the light of the Russian withdrawal from the city, the city’s mayor, […]
Well it seems that there is one virus that the former Chief Health Minister, Brendan Murphy, has been unable to keep out of Australia, and that’s the (generally) Western virus in which seemingly intelligent people at the top of the political, legal and cultural foodchain are unable to define what a woman is. Because one […]
Today a man humiliated another man and his wife in front of a crowd of people. The humiliated man was me. Jill and I were rushing our way from the Gold Lounge at Sydney Airport to our connecting flight from Perth to the Gold Coast. We’d heard the boarding call and bolted down the last […]
Billy Bragg has a fantastic song “A Northern Industrial Town”. It’s a fine tune with fine words describing any number of large towns/small cities in the UK that had their roots in the Industrial Revolution, when stuff was made, and people turned up in those cities to make that stuff, and perhaps make something of […]
While we’re all still patting ourselves on the back, raising our eyebrows with a shocked “Sheesh! that at least our tone is not like that” craaazy Citipointe Christian College in Queensland, it’s worth pointing out that the issue is not about tone. Not in the long run at least. Sure, we were all shocked or […]
We all grow out of our toys don’t we? And then we move on to sex. At least that’s how the story goes. Or at least that’s how the Disney story goes. Or at least that’s how the Disney story used to go, all things being equal. But things are not equal. Not in this […]
It was the blood-soaked sock and trainer that did it for me. Perhaps it’s because my own son is close to the now-dead boy’s age, but the video of a man weeping over the body of his 16 year old son, and stroking his head, in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol devastated me. I […]
My recent post, on why one should not necessarily ask a pastor why evangelism for most people is hard, elicited some spirited responses. Tucked between that initial post and this one, was one of the reasons that orthodox Christians are concerned about evangelism: Shane Warne’s death ushered him into an eternity without God, and a […]
Shane Warne was a human headline to the end. An end that came quickly and shockingly on the same day another cricketing superstar died. No disrespect to Rod Marsh, but while old Iron Gloves was famous for being a cricketer, Shane Warne was famous for being, well for being Shane Warne. Or Shane. To an […]
Every so often on good evangelical websites that I read I come across an article that asks the question (before answering it in three points), as to why we find evangelism so hard. The answers are usually along the lines of; We don’t see the danger We don’t see the value We don’t see the […]
There are so many moving parts with the recent issues around the transgender issue in schools it is hard to know where to start, but one thing is certain, it’s the most complex matter that faith-based schools have had to face. And the way the narrative is going at the moment, this could be the […]
Events dear boy, events When British Prime Minister Harold McMillan was asked what the biggest challenge was to the role of a leader, that was his reply. Events. In other words, you can plan all you like, go full steam ahead with your vision for whatever it is you are leading, but events – actual […]
Amongst the many articles written about Mars Hill, most destined to become digital land-fill, this one piece on the Mere Orthodoxy website stand out for its exceptional theological depth and pastoral insight. Jared Michelson has done an excellent job at getting to the issues behind the issues behind the issues behind the…. (you get what […]
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 is five years ago today since my father died. I remember the day well. It was the day we moved house. We woke early with the hot January sun streaming through the large sash windows of our old cottage, the light dancing across the walls, and onto the bedhead. I had gotten home late, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
How do we make space, to rest and be still, in this constantly “on” age? Is it even possible any longer? Are we so attached to our technology that we have lost the ability to tune out and turn off? And if it is impossible, what are the implications for us relationally and spiritually? I […]
Well, depending on whether you read the Sydney Morning Herald (or The Age), or The Australian (I read both), you will wake up today believing the proposed Religious Freedom Bill is either a front to hate on gay people, or a liberating document that protects kids in faith-based schools who are gay, and won’t allow […]
Well it’s that time of the election cycle again when the religious freedoms Bill is being put together. Gosh! Have three years really gone that quickly? And equally “Gosh!”, why do we find ourselves in the same place again, nervously looking at how this will all pan out in Federal Parliament? At the last Federal […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 always a matter of time. Only ever a matter of time. No amount of smiles and public speeches by Australian politicians coming up to elections, or giving the end of year graduation address affirming the right of faith based education systems to insist on their staff holding to sexual standards that their faith […]
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 […]
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 […]
Hey if you want to have a listen to my latest podcast, here’s the link on Apple podcasts
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