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 […]
Author: stephenmcalpine
Why John Dickson’s Undeceptions Trans Gender Podcast Episode is 73% Good
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 […]
Hey Christians, We’re All Prop Joe Now
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 […]
Hey Christians: When it comes to engaging non-Christians, don’t be like Aaron
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 curse of being “Decent But Dull”
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 […]
Why We’re All Manhattan Now
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 […]
Forget House Prices, Elections are About Who Gets to Defines Reality
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. […]
John and Amy’s Kitchen Table (and what it says about worship)
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 […]
Planting Flowers in Wartime
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, […]
The Virus is Spreading
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 […]
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