Steve Chalke or the repentant Rosaria? Whose religious experience?
“Who’s the most unlikely convert you have ever met? Of course, given the ravages of sin in our hearts and minds any convert is nothing short of a miracle, a new creation that only the original creator can bring about. All the same, there are some whose place in life seems to make it especially hard to hear the gospel, and when someone in that position does become a Christian, one stands amazed at the power of God’s grace in encountering them and bringing them home to himself.”
– Mike Ovey at Oak Hill College asks whose religious experience counts.
John Piper’s pleas to Pastors about money
Excellent advice from John Piper about the danger of loving money.
An Atheist becomes an evangelist… sort of
“Last week, sitting in a little pub in Dorset and about to sip my pint of Doombar, I was approached by the local vicar. He’d officiated at my daughter’s wedding last year and knew I was a Green, although he probably doesn’t know I’m an atheist.
He asked me if I had heard of the Diocese of Salisbury’s initiative called ‘Carbon Fast’…
I’ve never thought of myself as an evangelist, but now it suddenly makes sense.”
– Jenny Jones writes in The Telegraph.
More on the Carbon Fast here. And some thoughts from the Apostle Paul here and here.
An Unspiritual Church
“‘Spirituality’ is a term of great confusion today. Both inside and outside Christianity, people use the word in ways quite different to the Bible. This not only confuses Christians in what to expect from the Spirit of God but also confuses non-Christians about the work of God’s Spirit and the teaching of Christianity. For when Christians, in our confusion, misrepresent God’s word it is no surprise that non-Christians do not understand our message.”
– In his weekly column for the Cathedral, Dean of Sydney Phillip Jensen looks at what makes a church ‘Spirit filled’ – and what doesn’t.
Challenges Gospel Ministers can expect
“What challenges lie ahead? The race this new generation is called to run will include several unavoidable challenges that will demand the highest level of biblical fidelity and theological courage, matched to keen cultural sensitivity and a deep love for human beings caught in the maelstrom of late modernity. …”
– Albert Mohler identifies several key challenges for all who are called to preach Christ.
Why are you doing what you are doing?
“A friend sent me a postcard once from his holiday destination with the inscription ‘Why are you doing what you are doing?” I asked myself that question recently while I was sitting in a lecture at the Australian Command and Staff College at Weston Creek, where I am posted as chaplain…”
– Moore College graduate Peter Friend, inaugural Chaplain at the Australian Defence College, shares why he is doing what he is doing. (Good point for prayer too.)
A Trolling Tragedy
“The very recent and very tragic death of Charlotte Dawson has brought the terrors of cyber-trolling to the forefront of Australian hearts and minds yet again…”
– The Australian Church Record calls for “more virtuous social media interaction” in the wake of a terrible tragedy.
A relentlessly agreeable God?
“What would it be like to live in a world where no one ever disagrees with us? Initially it would seem idyllic, perfect even! …
What about a world where God never disagrees with us?”
– Mel Lacy at Oak Hill College in London asks the question (PDF) in the latest issue of Cross†Way.
Sufficiency
“After spending the last 37 years of my life being a Christian pastor, 26 of those years training others to be pastors and missionaries, I have reached this conclusion…
– David Cook, Moderator General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, writes about the sufficiency of Scripture. (You may need to scroll down – now updated but originally published on 17 February 2014.)
Why Follow Jesus?
“At the end of the rather amazing narrative in John 6 Jesus asks the twelve remaining disciples, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’
The context was that 5000 were following him at the beginning of the day but now the last of them has drifted off and only the original twelve remained.
Peter replies for the twelve, ‘Lord, to whom can we go?’ And his reason was, ‘You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the holy one of God’…”
– Bishop Paul Barnett reminds us who it is who has the words of eternal life.
Reflections on ‘What Can Miserable Christians Sing?’
“Of all the things I have written, my little essay, ‘What Can Miserable Christians Sing?’ has provided me with so many delightful surprises over the years. …”
– Carl Trueman at Westminster Seminary reminds us of “the power of liturgy to shape the mind of a Christian congregation” – at 9Marks.
A Sat-Nav with Nowhere to go
“Do you ever find yourself driving on auto pilot? Not just do you change gears and use the traffic indicator without conscious thought but do you also travel along habitual routes without thinking about it? Have you ever found yourself following your usual route but going in the wrong direction? Forgetting your destination is a significant mistake to make…”
– Phillip Jensen writes in his latest column for the Cathedral.
Adultery: When ‘love’ is a ‘tragedy’
“…So common has it become to describe an extra-marital affair as ‘loving’ that even the dictionaries now define a ‘love affair’ as ‘a romantic or sexual relationship between two people who are not married to each other.’ We know words evolve over time; and the journalist and barrister may just be reflecting the now common meaning of the word.
However, if that is true, our Bible translators and we Christians need to find a different word to describe God’s character, his disposition towards us and his actions on our behalf.”
– Phillip Jensen writes about true love.
Broadside from Canterbury and York
“The English Archbishops of York and Canterbury have fired the equivalent of a broadside into the respective Anglican Provinces of Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, and naturally it has to do with the Western hot button issue of homosexuality. …
When the head, nominal though he be, of the Anglican Communion lectures and cautions any Province, the implications and threat cannot be missed. It is odd that this lecture and caution would be directed toward the orthodox Anglicans of the Communion and not against the heterodox Anglicans both in North America and indeed within the Church of England itself…”
– Bishop David Anderson, President of the American Anglican Council, looks at the extraordinary intervention during the week.
Seeger: The Seeker?
“Like most young people, I spent my teenage and young adult days restlessly tasting the different music that popular culture was serving me. By my mid-teens I was sick of the mindless lyrics of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll. I explored the jazz scene, even hearing the great Satchmo at the old Stadium at Rushcutters Bay. I found the classics and pounded my poor families’ ears with the constant re-playing of Ravel’s Bolero – as if it was not sufficiently repetitive itself!
And then I discovered folk music; a place where the lyrics of protest and morality could find voice. It was not just the polished commercial performers like Peter, Paul and Mary (whom I also saw at the Stadium) but behind them the deeper thinking of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.”
– Phillip Jensen, Dean of Sydney, writes his weekly column for the Cathedral congregation.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…