A recent post I wrote, Christian Restivism, got some blowback from those who wondered if my call for us to be less activist and more “restivist” was an excuse to be lazy Christians and avoid the hard grind of ministry in this life. So, for example, this from one commenter: Stephen, you’ve died and gone […]
Recent Posts
Mourning Has Broken
It’s six months today since we moved house. It’s also six months today since my father died. It would have been his 75th birthday last Sunday, so Facebook, in its cheery manner of wanting us all to get along, threw up a photo from his 74th birthday telling us all to be happy. And we […]
Don’t Sex Up the Christian Stats in Australia
A tweet by John Dickson this week that the real number of Christians in Australia is somewhere between the fifteen percent of recorded church attendees and the 51 per cent who ticked “Christian” on the recent census reminds me of the “sexing up” furore that hit the UK Blair Government back in 2003. Back then […]
51 per cent of us are Christian? Yeah, right!
There’s as much chance that 51 per cent of Australians are Christian as there are that fifty per cent of our young people are gender fluid when it comes to their sexuality. The latest research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from that census (you know, the one we were all in self-loathing anguish about last year […]
Everyone Smiles at Ten K
I ran my first marathon this past weekend. Maybe even my last marathon. It’s not that I ran terribly or that I hated it, (3:18, thanks for asking), it’s just that the whole marathon thing doesn’t do it for me. Never has. Give me a frisky 5, a tasty 10, or even a trying 21.1, […]
Why It Might Need to Get Worse In Order to Gets Better
Things must be getting strange when even veteran atheist (he’s been shifted from the new category) Richard Dawkins now advocating a return to religious instruction classes in British schools. Perhaps it’s just a turn in the evolutionary cog, but Dawkins is now, publicly, advocating comparative religious classes in schools in the UK, and note that […]
Pentecost Sunday and Terror
We wake up on Pentecost Sunday to yet another round of terror. For most secular Westerners it’s just the second day of the weekend, or the second day of a three day weekend if you are lucky enough to live in Western Australia today. But for the Church it’s a reminder, and an invitation for […]
Driscoll and The Bogeyman Narrative
After reading The Gospel Coalition article – Seattle Reboot: Life After Mars Hill about the Driscoll/Mars Hill fall-out I was struck by two things. First the total absence of the Bogeyman, Driscoll himself. He looms over the article by his vast absence not his vast presence. The general tenor is “We’ve moved on so let’s not […]
Kidults: the Culture and the Church
Heard this this morning on the Australian national broadcaster’s “yoof” station, Triple J: “So this week we’re looking at what it means to be in your twenties and have a baby. You’re not a girl anymore, you’re not a woman. You’re not a teenager, but you’re certainly not an adult.” Not an adult in your […]
A Crucial and Brilliant Read
This blog post by a friend, Michael O’Neill, from Vose Seminary here in Perth is just brilliant. It deals with the tension of Christians in a turning culture, and it does so with wisdom, grace and insight. It’s observations of and implications for Christian community are fantastic. Read it here:
