Promoting plagiarism in ministry
“Over the last few weeks there’s been a lot of angst in my denomination’s local circles about evangelism. A visiting friend told us we’re no longer keen on it, and the statistics show that over the last ten years we’ve lost people just as fast as we’ve converted them. …
In the midst of this I thought I’d share what our church is doing. We’re a small, struggling church in the part of Sydney where Anglican churches go to die. We’re not big. We’re not successful. Our senior minister is a bit of an idiot. We haven’t found the evangelism silver bullet. …”
– At GoThereFor.com, Mike Doyle at St. James Berala, reckons you ought to find the best of the best – and “plagiarise the life out of it”.
Related:
Reflections on Sydney Anglicanism: An interview with David Robertson – Australian Church Record.
Have we lost evangelism? with Phil Colgan and Craig Schafer.
The Church and the Bible (Part 2)
“What particularly threatens us as members of the Church of England is the very serious danger of the official acceptance by our Church of doctrines and practices which are additional and contrary to the Scriptural witness – and all in the supposed interest of larger and truer unity among Christians.
As each Lambeth Conference makes more obvious, there is the growing pressure of the Anglican Communion, and of a striving after a comprehensive ‘wholeness‘ whose governing principle is not uncompromising loyalty to the Scriptures, as the one supreme rule of faith and conduct, but the holding together in one family of churches which have come to believe and worship differently …”
– Alan Stibbs wasn’t writing yesterday, but in the January 1960 issue of The Australian Church Record.
The Tyranny of the Immediate in Short Attention Span Theatre
“Over the weekend Alan Jacobs, distinguished professor of the humanities in the Honors Program of Baylor University, had an important post on how we process the never-ending influx of information fixated on Now …”
– Read this, rather than just liking on Facebook. From Justin Taylor.
Working alongside men in ministry
“In ‘The value of training women for ministry’, Tracey Gowing shared some of her practical wisdom on how to train women for ministry and why that’s a worthwhile task. But as a ministry staff-worker on various university campuses around Australia, Tracey hasn’t just trained women! Many men will testify that they learned invaluable lessons about leadership and biblical manhood from having Tracey as their co-leader.
What’s her secret? Tracey has no new, radical beliefs—she just trusts the Bible. …”
– At GoThereFor.com, Lauren Driscoll continues her interview with Tracey Gowing.
Jesus never directly said “I’m God!”: Answering our Muslim friends (Part 2)
“But Jesus never directly said he’s God”, says our Muslim friend. How would you answer?
Part 1 of this series had us step forward on the front foot against this specific challenge by rejecting the premise and reframing the issue.
But if we did work within the boundaries imposed by our Muslim friends, how would we defend the deity of Jesus from his own words in the Gospels? …
– Ryan van der Avoort continues to share practical advice, at The Australian Church Record.
Depending on Others
“O that it would rain! I admit to not knowing a whole lot about sheep and cattle and seasonal crops but I have been a person for sixty years and I’ve been farming people vocationally for thirty years of my working life.
I hope that doesn’t sound inappropriate and if it does, please forgive me. But like a farmer who hates to see his stock in poor condition, I am a person who hates to see any of God’s people in a similar condition. Sadly, those two things go hand in hand in times of drought. …”
– Bishop of Armidale, Rick Lewers, writes on his diocesan website.
Reaching people with the gospel
Archbishop Peter Jensen has long been an advocate of looking for opportunities to share the gospel in taxis – and he was sure to carry a copy of The Essential Jesus (The Gospel According to Luke) to give away.
Tim Challies recently spoke at a bookshop in Scotland, and was asked about good ways to share the gospel with people.
His reply? “Uber!”. Good advice.
What is the gospel? — An appeal for clarity
“I remember, more than twenty years ago now, an international visitor to Sydney being asked this question. Throughout the week that he had been here, the speaker had appealed to the gospel many times.
Clearly in a part of the world well-known for the strength of its evangelical witness, such an appeal was essential if he was to get a hearing. But the appeal had not been convincing and it had become increasingly obvious that at this most basic level our guest had a very different idea of what exactly it was that he was appealing to repeatedly throughout the week. So some brave soul — someone braver than me — publicly asked him the question. What is the gospel?…”
– Dr. Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore College, tackles a crucial question in a new essay.
Take the time to read it all here. [This is a re-post from 2015.]
You can also download it as a 240kb PDF file.
John Piper’s reflections after a mainline church service
“Since our church has a Saturday night service and my wife was out of town, I was feeling perhaps especially venturesome a couple of weeks ago and decided to go to our church on Saturday night, and then go to a mainline Protestant church in downtown Minneapolis. …
If you walk into that church, and you didn’t know any better, you’d say this looks like a church from forever ago — this is what church is. Big stained-glass windows, and pastors at the front, a big organ, lots of music, singing about Jesus — what could be more churchy than this? Except there’s nothing there of any ultimate reality.”
– John Piper shares his reflections after visiting a liberal, progressive church.
It may be that many Bible-believing Anglicans have had little experience of what is taught in some other churches. A taste of bland, liberal heresy can be a strong incentive to value Bible-focussed and Christ-honouring worship.
Standing on the Authority of God’s Word
“The absolute necessity of what Gafcon rightly contends for is becoming a very personal experience for me. My wife, Gillian, and I have been married for 37 years and I write (with her agreement) on our last wedding anniversary. …
For the suffering and the dying, the pick ’n mix optional orthodoxy of the new Canterbury Anglicanism simply will not do. If my understanding of God’s grace in the gospel and my hope in Christ are just that – my understanding – where is my assurance and confidence in the face of the ‘last enemy’?…”
– In a deeply personal note GAFCON’s Membership Development Secretary, Charles Raven, shares the hope he and his wife Gillian cling to – the sure promises of Gods Word. And do pray for them both.
The Church and the Bible (Part 1)
“On this issue of the relation of the Church to the Bible, the declared position of the Church of England is explicit and unmistakable. The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are avowedly acknowledged as supreme and sufficient in authority.
They provide the Church as well as every individual Christian with a decisive God-given rule of faith and conduct. Everything which is either believed or done, with the accompanying claim that it possesses proper Christian sanction and authority, must be capable of being tested and vindicated by this standard. …”
– Alan Stibbs’ words in The Australian Church Record of 1960 are every bit as relevant now as they were then.
What do you do when there is conflict in your church?
“What do you do when there’s conflict in your church?
Because there will be at some point.
How can you deal with conflict well?
What do you do when there’s no conflict to prepare for the times when conflict will come? How to you give your people a framework for understanding and resolving conflict?
What do you do when a couple comes to you and the marriage is a warzone? What should you outsource? What should you do yourself?
Bruce Burgess is the Australian Director of Peacewise.”
– Bruce was interviewed by Dominic Steele on this week’s episode of The Pastors Heart.
Religious Freedom and land-clearing
“A religious group has claimed that “religious freedom rights” allow it to ignore Australian laws governing land-clearing and other provisions regulating land development. The claim is clearly wrong. It is important to spell out why, so this false claim does not affect other, justifiable, arguments that can be made about appropriate protection of religious freedom. …”
– At Law and Religion Australia, Assoc. Professor Neil Foster points of that Religious Freedom does not give a license to ignore the law.
The value of training women for ministry
“Tracey Gowing helps oversee evangelical student ministry across Australia. In her role she has trained and influenced countless women, and worked with plenty of men.
Tracey is full of practical wisdom on how to live out the Bible’s teaching on men and women. I thought I’d pick her brains, firstly on how she trains women, and then next time on how she works with men.”
– At GoThereFor.com, Lauren Driscoll speaks with Tracey Gowing.
Middle-aged white men can tell the Truth
“Maybe we never realised it, but John 1:1 changes the way we understand everything.
It means that we believe in objective truth. That is to say, truth is real, it sits above us all, and all things ought to be conformed to it.
Truth is not merely ‘my truth’ or ‘true for me.’ Truth is true for everyone. …
But truth is dying in the West. …
This is why identity politics has caught on so quickly. It teaches us that we are no longer to measure things by what is said (ie whether it’s true), but rather who said it.
There are those who have no right to speak about things because of who they are. Because their group identity makes them ‘privileged’ they cannot speak about issues affecting other groups who are ‘victims.’
Examples abound. Only yesterday…”
– Here’s a thoughtful piece from Martyn Iles at The Australian Christian Lobby.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…