Bible Reading Plans for 2012

Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition has links to a selection of Bible reading plans here.

Update: Ligonier Ministries has more.

Whether you read on the web, on your phone, listen via podcast or read in your printed Bible (recommended!) there’s something here for you.

 

New book on the way from David Peterson

‘Transformed by God’ – Something to look forward to in April 2012.

Related: Transformed by God: David Peterson interviewed at Oak Hill.

Missed Carols from St Andrew’s? (updated)

If you missed “Carols from St Andrew’s” on Christmas Eve on ABC TV, you can see it on the ABC website.

We’ve heard that the vodcast is not geo-protected, so it can be seen worldwide. You could share the link with your friends overseas.

Tewantin Community Gathering of Care and Support

It would be good to uphold in your prayers Mark Calder and the Anglican Church at Noosa as they seek to help their local community after yesterday’s tragic fire.

(Update: audio and the hand out from the meeting has been posted here.)

God Becomes our Neighbour

Read Archbishop Peter Jensen’s Christmas sermon, delivered at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney –

“The success of the whole human enterprise depends on knowing God. That is the condition for us to have what the Bible calls ‘eternal life’, the fulfilment of all human hopes and aspirations in this life and in the world to come. Getting to know God is the central ambition and task of your life. Do you know God? …”

– read it all at SydneyAnglicans.net.

Queen’s Christmas message 2011

“God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.”

– from Queen Elizabeth II’s 2011 Christmas broadcast. (text here)

Archbishop Peter Jensen’s 2011 Christmas message

Archbishop Peter Jensen has released his Christmas message for 2011.

“we are celebrating the generosity of Jesus, who left his heavenly home to live amongst us and to die for us on a Roman cross to reconcile us to God.”

Here’s the full text.

Christmas is our big annual reminder of the generous love of God. When Jesus was born, it was God himself entering our story to rescue us from sin.

Some people just can’t stand the fact that he is the most important person in history and our whole dating system revolves around his birth. They even want to change the language to write him out.

It’s sad really. It shows that people are frightened of his influence and will do anything to stop us talking about him.

Sad, because Jesus Christ is the world’s greatest inspiration. We need him in our lives and in our history and in our community.

The signs are that the world is in for a difficult time economically. For some countries it is not just a downturn, they will need to grapple with a breakdown in their economic systems. Already, many people go hungry each day. If times get worse, it will be the poor and disadvantaged who suffer most. We are going to need to be generous, and the greatest inspiration to generosity that the world has ever known is Jesus.

When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating the generosity of Jesus, who left his heavenly home to live amongst us and to die for us on a Roman cross to reconcile us to God.

When we are reconciled to God, it affects the whole way we think of others. We reach out in care and forgiveness.

It’s a glad and generous season of the year because our God makes us glad with his generosity.

Dr Peter F Jensen,
Archbishop of Sydney,
Christmas, 2011 AD.

Video version here (thanks to SydneyAnglicans.net)

Carols from St Andrew’s Christmas Eve

ABC Television will broadcast the service of Carols from St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney this Christmas Eve.

Watch it around Australia on ABC1 6:00–7:00pm on Saturday 24th December.

‘A Christmas message based on the prophetic lyrics of Mr Roy Wood’

“This Christmas-creep cultural shift seems to indicate three things about society: we have more money (or at least more access to credit) than was the case thirty years ago; we are increasingly obsessed with ‘treating ourselves’; and the boundary between adulthood and childhood has become blurred to the point of near erasure …”

– Carl Trueman has a thoughtful Christmas reflection at Reformation 21.

Knox/Robinson for today

“You might be unfamiliar with the term ‘Knox/Robinson’, but you may well have come across the substance of these two men’s teaching if you’ve ever looked into the doctrine of church.

Observers of Anglicanism in Sydney have often remarked on a confident and distinctive approach to the nature and purpose of church, led by such men as Howard Mowll, TC Hammond, Marcus Loane, Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox. The source of this approach is undoubtedly the teaching of Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox at Moore College from the early 1950s until the early 1980s, though both men denied they were teaching anything unusual and could point to others who were saying similar things.

For us, nearly thirty years after the last published piece by either of them, how should we respond to the theological legacy of Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox? …”

– Read Mark Thompson’s paper at The Briefing.

Prayers for defence chaplains at Christmas

This is a good time to be reminded to pray for defence chaplains. Many minister to servicemen and women who are far from home. Defence Anglicans has two stories to give ideas for prayer –

An army chaplain’s Christmas preparations and Advent in Afghanistan.

Christmas messages from around Australia

Advent / Christmas messages have been published by various bishops of the Anglican Church of Australia. Here are some we’ve spotted so far –

Bishop to the Australian Defence Force – Len Eacott.
Armidale – Bishop Peter Brain.
Newcastle – Bishop Brian Farran.
Rockhampton –Bishop Godfrey Fryar.
Riverina –Bishop Doug Stevens.
Bendigo – Bishop Andrew Curnow (page 2 of PDF).
Canberra & Goulburn – Bishop Stuart Robinson.
Tasmania – Bishop John Harrower.

(Image: Anglican Church of Australia.)

A Threat to World Anglicanism?

“… she predicts the imminent demise of Sydney Anglicanism in its present form, claiming that it will be brought down by a combination of financial mismanagement, the failure of the current leadership to ensure an equally committed succession and the general fatigue of Sydney lay people, who apparently want their diocese to look more like Perth or Melbourne. …”

– from Gerald Bray’s editorial in the Winter 2011 issue of Churchman. (PDF file.)

His demands are not burdensome

A Christmas reflection from Peter Brain, Bishop of Armidale:

‘He was born outside a small hotel in an obscure Jewish village in the great days of the Roman Empire. The story is usually prettified when we tell it Christmas by Christmas, but it is really rather beastly and cruel. The reason why Jesus was born outside the hotel is that it was full and nobody would offer a bed to a woman in labour, so that she had to have her baby in the stables, and cradle him in a cattle-trough. The story is told dispassionately and without comment, but no thoughtful reader can help shuddering at the picture of callousness and degradation that it draws.’ So wrote J I Packer in his classic Knowing God (1973).

Christmas reminds us of our sin, of that there is no doubt. We needed saving and continue to do so. The fact that we seek to beautify these ugly facts of the Christmas event, and continue to trivialise their importance with a range of activities that leave us too exhausted to reflect and rendered unable to grasp its seriousness by our round of trivial festivities, demonstrates our propensity to crowd God out.  Read more

Christopher Hitchens obituary by Douglas Wilson

“Christopher knew that faithful Christians believe that it is appointed to man once to die, and after that the Judgment. He knew that we believe what Jesus taught about the reality of damnation. He also knew that we believe—for I told him—that in this life, the door of repentance is always open.…”

– Douglas Wilson has written this obituary for Christianity Today. (Photo: Wikipedia.)

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