On ‘Worship Nights’

Mikey Lynch at The Gospel Coalition Australia shares some observations –

“I have observed an uptick in stand-alone ‘worship nights’ in Australia in the 2020s—that is, Christian prayer and praise communal singing events. I hear of churches and inter-church conferences hosting special ‘worship nights’; there are even once-off inter-church events, often hosted by informal parachurch groups.

These kinds of events have strong appeal among those under thirty.

In this article, I give some notes on this phenomenon, concluding with words of caution and calls for discernment. …”

– Read here.

John Newton: Mastermind and mentor of early Australian Anglicanism

“On 8 July 1777, Reverend John Newton confessed in his diary to binge-reading the latest bestseller: Captain James Cook’s A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, published that same year. It caught Newton’s imagination, but it also caught his evangelical heart: he prayed that the gospel would ‘arise and shine upon’ people of ‘unknown regions’.

Newton didn’t know it then, but his Lord had a time and a plan for those souls. Within seven years, Newton himself would play a crucial role in launching and nurturing the first Christian mission in Australia. …”

– Again, give thanks to the Lord for John Newton. At the Moore College website.

The clarity of Scripture and church gatherings

James Chen writes at The Australian Church Record –

“In the wake of the technological developments that churches went through during the COVID lockdowns, I explored different live and recorded videos of gatherings that occurred locally and globally. What it provided me was an insight into the flavour of church services across denominations and regions.

Something I was struck by was the disproportionate number of Protestant gatherings that would say, or have on their church website, something to the effect of how much they valued God’s word, yet would then have no more than one section of Scripture read in the service, usually a Bible reading preceding the sermon. …”

– A challenge and an encouragement for all churches.

The College for the Colony

Ever wondered why Moore College is called “Moore College”?

– This infographic for the 170th anniversary of the founding of the College introduces Thomas Moore.

Richard Johnson: Laying the foundation stone of the Australian evangelical church

“When we think of the great evangelical movements of the late eighteenth century, our minds often turn to the Clapham Sect, those remarkable men and women whose faith reshaped British public life and whose influence extended around the world.

Figures such as William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton and Hannah More loom large in this story. Richard Johnson, the first evangelical chaplain to Australia, does not.

Johnson was never formally part of the Clapham Sect, nor was he a central figure in the closely related Eclectic Society, a small, but influential gathering of evangelical clergy and laypeople committed to deep theological reflection and gospel advance. And yet, without these two groups—and the prayerful vision that animated them—Richard Johnson would almost certainly never have set foot on Australian soil. …”

– Moore College Principal Mark Thompson reminds us of the legacy of Richard Johnson.

Context, Context, Context — Applying biblical thinking

From Phillip Jensen –

“Hard passages of the Bible are great passages. The reason that they are hard is because we are not thinking biblically. Wrestling with these hard passages gives us the opportunity to change our thinking in order to be aligned with biblical thinking.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 is notoriously difficult, and over the next two weeks, Peter and I are going to try to unravel some of its complexities.

We start today by looking at the context.”

– Hear Peter and Philip discuss at Two Ways News.

AI is coming for your Systematic Theology

Tim Challies warns of the dangers already present –

“A recent article at The American Scholar asks Who Is Blake Whiting?

Whiting appears to be the most prolific scholar of our age, sometimes publishing up to 13 books a week ‘on a host of complex archaeological and historical subjects, ranging from the collapse of Near Eastern civilizations in 1177 BCE to the recent discovery of a huge Silk Road-era city in Central Asia.’ He must be quite the individual!

But as you no doubt guessed, he is not an individual at all. Rather, Blake Whiting is fabricated, and the books under his name have been generated using AI. …

I want you to know about these books because I want you to be aware that this is happening. I want you to know it’s happening because it’s likely that things will get far worse before they get any better. I’ll first introduce you to this slop theology, then discuss the threat these books represent, and then tell you how you can identify them.”

– Read it all here.

Do I choose an old or new church?

“Many words are being written, and the occasional clickbait headline, to debate whether a revival is blowing across the land. The answer (as I’ve been saying for the last few years) is, no. As much as we pray and long for spiritual revival in Melbourne and across Australia, we are not witnessing revival. And yet, I do think there has been a nudge, a gentle opening of the curtains.

Evidence of this nudge is suggested by increased Bible sales and some churches indicating growth in Sunday attendance. There is anecdotal evidence of a slight turn from religious indifference (and animosity) toward curiosity. Dare I suggest, that even among Australia’s major newspapers, their tune toward Christianity has changed a little.

One of the quandaries facing young Aussies as they contemplate visiting a church and investigating Christianity is this: should I go for new or for old? …”

Murray Campbell at Mentone Baptist in Melbourne suggests some diagnostic questions to ask in considering what church to join –

“Do they read the Bible?

Do they teach from the Bible?

Does the preacher’s message match what the Bible teaches?

Do they teach that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone?

Do they believe in heaven and hell?

Do they preach the sufficiency of Jesus’ death on the cross?

Do they practice baptism and the Lord’s Supper in accord with the significance given in Scripture?

Is the church’s sexual ethics in line with the Bible.

Do the people love one another? Jesus tells us ‘the world will know you are my disciples, because you love one another’.

Do they welcome visitors with kindness and grace. Is the church safe for the unbeliever and inquirer?”

– See it all here.

Principles of the Prayer Book

“What I offer here … is not a nostalgic plea for the recovery of a lost golden age, nor a polemical defence of one authorised book over another. Rather, it is an attempt to articulate and reflect on the principles that underlie The Book of Common Prayer, principles which have shaped Anglican worship historically and which continue to exercise normative authority within the Anglican Church of Australia.”

Bishop of The Northern Territory, Greg Anderson, writes at The Australian Church Record –

“I am probably one of a relatively small number of people these days who has been – hard to know quite how to describe it – perhaps a committed participant in liturgical church services from my earliest childhood memories. Perhaps unusually, I was an early and competent reader, so I imagine I was reading and saying the prayers along with everyone else. And since it was the same liturgy every week (apart from the Psalm, which we didn’t always say), you didn’t need to read all that well… well, you could join in from memory. Our church was devotionally warm, scripturally focused, and theologically normal, and no one imagined for a moment that liturgical services sat in tension with any of that.

That is my background. I know that this is far from everyone’s experience. All this is to say that I approach liturgical corporate worship with a long?standing positive experience – something that is relatively rare these days. What I offer here, therefore, is not a nostalgic plea for the recovery of a lost golden age, nor a polemical defence of one authorised book over another. Rather, it is an attempt to articulate and reflect on the principles that underlie The Book of Common Prayer, principles which have shaped Anglican worship historically and which continue to exercise normative authority within the Anglican Church of Australia.

Before turning to those principles themselves, two introductory notes are necessary: first, concerning the place of The Book of Common Prayer in the Australian Church; and second, concerning where such principles are to be found and how they might be identified and ranked. …”

– Read it all here.

Random Thoughts about Preaching and Being Preached To

Canadian Christian writer and blogger Tim Challies has put together some “random thoughts” on preaching and being preached to –

“There are few matters more foundational to pastoral ministry than preaching, and few matters more common to the Christian experience than being preached to. Most pastors will preach thousands of sermons over the span of their ministry, and most congregants will listen to thousands of sermons over the span of their lifetime. This means we should think about preaching often and well!

In this article, I’ve simply collected some random thoughts on the subject and have alternated them so that half are for the ones preaching the sermons and the other half are for the ones listening to them. …”

Here are extracts from the first four –

“In my experience, sermons tend to grow in quality more by subtraction than by addition. Often, one of the best things a preacher can do to improve his sermon is to strip away 20 or 25% of his content as a final step in the preparation process. …

—-

Being obviously attentive as you listen to a sermon can be a great gift to the preacher. The preacher gains more than you may think from your looks of appreciation (or disgust), your attentive eyes (or tired ones), and your quiet amens (or groans). …

—-

The appropriate length, style, and format of a sermon can change over time and between contexts. We should expect that sermons preached at an Anglican Church in Sydney, a Baptist Church in Topeka, and a Dutch Reformed church in Cape Town will differ in many ways. … The challenge of any preacher is to preach the sermons that are suited to his congregation and not some other.

—

It is good to listen to a sermon with an open Bible … the preacher assumes you will have an open Bible so you can follow along with him. This is difficult to do when you did not bring one or will not open it. …”

– Be encouraged to take the time to read and ponder them.

How to put together ‘an excellent’ funeral

This week from The Pastor’s Heart –

“Not every funeral is great. Sometimes they go too long, sometimes the gospel is not clear, sometimes the content overlaps.

How do you create a funeral service that God would be pleased with, connects well with people, honours the deceased and serves the bereaved?

• David Cook is former Principal of Sydney Missionary and Bible College,
• Sandy Grant is Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral Sydney, and
• Gary Coleman is former Chaplain to the Motor Racing Industry.”

– Watch here. Some very helpful advice.

Recommended:

At a Time Like This – Some answers for loss and grief by Simon Manchester.

Judging the Unrighteous — Exclusion from the kingdom of heaven

From Phillip Jensen –

“If ever there is a passage of the Bible that has caused controversy and division today, it is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

There is not much doubt as to what the passage says or means, yet the application of this passage in the church and in society has led to great conflict.

In today’s episode, Peter outlines something of the background of the conflict within the Anglican Communion over the last two decades, before we turn to the real pastoral importance of this passage in the lives of the leaders.”

– Peter and Phillip Jensen discuss this very sobering topic at Two Ways News.

Preaching to Meet the Need

At The Expository Preaching Trust, Bob Thomas remembers the preaching of Graham Miller (pictured) as an example to consider and follow –

“Dr Graham Miller, friend and mentor of many young ministers in his day, and now in Glory, told a group of us once that he never had queues of people lining up at the Manse door to seek counselling or ask questions – and he attributed this to the fact that he was answering their questions in his preaching.

Those of us who sat under his preaching could testify that it was profoundly simple and simply profound, firmly tied to the passage of Scripture he was expounding in careful detail as he preached serially through a book of the Bible, and that it did indeed do what he claimed it did – answered peoples’ questions along the way and to their satisfaction. …”

– Read it all here.

Photo: Banner of Truth.

(Some of Graham Miller’s audio messages, recorded in 1959, can be found here.)

321: Seeing Life Clearly

From The Gospel Coalition Australia –

“Glen Scrivener’s How to See Life in 321 is a unique contribution to the plethora of evangelistic books available.

In this book, Christian doctrines such as trinity, sin, salvation, and union are given their initial conceptual meaning through simple stories and explanations.

The book and corresponding online course are divided into four sections : ‘Jesus: Our Guide’, ‘God’s Three-ness’, ‘The World’s Two-ness’, ‘Your One-ness’.

Each section comprises two chapters; the first begins with an illustrative story, and the second provides a deeper look at the illustrated idea with personal application.

There is a brief and helpful frequently asked questions section at the back of the book which gives general answers for those who are asking whether Christianity is true. The FAQ answer on divine hiddenness is an important contribution given people no longer assume the existence of God as compared to by people attending a Billy Graham crusade sixty years ago …”

– Jospeh Hewitt enthusiastically reviews Glen Scrivener’s How to See Life in 321.

“If your church is looking a resource to give non-Christians who do not want to read a gospel just yet, How to See Life is probably the pick of the bunch.”

Image: Speak Life’s 321 course.

Australian Journal of Law and Religion — Volume 7

From Associate Professor Neil Foster at Law and Religion Australia –

“The latest volume of the Australian Journal of Law and Religion has been published (and is freely available online.)

The Table of Contents is below – always worth reading! In particular I would like to commend the prize-winning essay by Jacob Carson, a former student of mine, on the important issues around teaching of religion in public schools.”

– Read about it (and download your copy) here.

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