The last time I went for a haircut was back in 1994. A quarter of a century ago. I remember it well, even if at the time I didn’t know it would be the final one for 25 years. Italian Catholic bloke in his late fifties called Tony in Wesley Arcade Perth. Slicked back balding […]
I worry that an awful lot of modern day ministry is about making bricks for evangelical pharaohs. Whether those pharaohs are actual people, or whether they are systems and philosophies of ministry that have been put in place, doesn’t matter all that much; making bricks is the paradigm of much modern ministry. And it’s leaving […]
Imagine waking up and only you had heard of The Beatles. That’s the conceit behind the latest movie from director Danny “SlumDog Millionaire” Boyle and screenwriter Richard “Love Actually” Curtis, Yesterday. Yesterday is shaping up to be the feel-good movie of the coming northern summer, in which a talented, but spectacularly unsuccessful musician, Jack Malik, wakes […]
When Matisha moved into the retirement apartment next to my Mum last year, things got ugly. Very ugly. Very quickly. Matisha took an instant dislike to Mum. Only my Mum. All the other residents she was fine with. Chatted with them. Spent time with them But there was something about Mum that she took an […]
Dutchman Johan Cruyff was perhaps the greatest footballer/soccer player ever. Brazil’s Pele might pip him in some polls; George Best was a brief shining superstar. But as the leader of the Ajax FC and Dutch teams’ “total football” approach in the 1970s, plus a glittering playing and coaching career with the famous FC Barcelona, Cruyff, […]
Six years ago today, after several months of meeting as two household groups, our church, Providence Church Midland, decided to do a public gathering every fortnight, and household on the other weekend. We rented an old building in Midland, the old Midland bank: About thirty or so of us turned up (no visitors despite a […]
Golf is having its God moment. Or, to put it another way, its Blockbuster Video moment. And it’s happening with the same generation of people that the church has been struggling to engage with in the West – the Millennials. 22-37 year olds have lost interest in the game. Golf courses, which are expensive to […]
Although I have heard of evangelical mega-pastor James MacDonald, I am not familiar with any of his books. Or his sermons. Or his broadcast messages on Christian radio. And I didn’t know his church, Harvest Bible Chapel, had 13 thousand members and numerous affiliate churches. I didn’t know MacDonald’s church was in Chicago, however there […]
If any little good could come out of our Western culture’s embedding of first the practice of, then the celebration of, abortion it’s this: The issue a cast iron example of a slippery slope in action. We do not have to postulate, or construct flow charts, to determine whether radical social changes have huge unintended […]
Forget toxic masculinity. Don’t even mention toxic femininity. Yesterday’s move by the New York legislature to enshrine abortion up to full term in New York State is a prime example of one thing: toxic humanity. But more than that. The true toxicity is not in the signing of the legislation, but in the unadulterated celebrating […]
