The Lydia Project: Conversations with Christian Women

“As a young girl, I just loved to talk. I talked all the way through primary school and high school, and when I became a Christian at fourteen, I loved to talk with my Christian friends and leaders about what it meant to follow Jesus.

Thirty (thirty!?) years on, I still love to be a part of these encouraging Christian conversations. They spur me on to keep standing firm in Christ, and they open my mind and heart to new ways of thinking about the things of God. …”

– At Equal But Different, Moore College graduate Tori Walker introduces her Lydia Project podcasts (hosted by The Gospel Coalition Australia).

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”.

Reflections on Sydney Anglicanism: An interview with David Robertson – Australian Church Record.

Have we lost evangelism? with Phil Colgan and Craig Schafer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

NSW CMS Summer School applications open

Gary Millar is the main speaker at the 2019 NSW & ACT CMS Summer School.

Applications are now open.

The Judges of Jesus

“Luke brilliantly plots the intersection of the eternal with the temporal (Luke 3:1–2). It was in Tiberius Caesar’s fifteenth year, AD 28, that John the Baptist began proclaiming the word of God.

He also remarkably captures the political complexity of Palestine. Pontius Pilate was military governor of Judea, Herod’s son Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee, and Caiaphas was high priest of the temple city, Jerusalem.

In the narrative that follows Luke traces the movements of Jesus within the jurisdictions of those three men. …”

– At his blog, Bishop Paul Barnett reflects on the legacy of the three judges of Jesus.