August – September 2023 Southern Cross out now
The August – September 2023 issue of Southern Cross magazine from the Diocese of Sydney is now out.
Printed copies will be available in parishes shortly, and you can read it on the web right now.
In his column this month, Archbishop Kanishka Raffel reflects on Our True Spiritual Condition –
“Recently I was walking through the city and, as I crossed Martin Place, I noticed the usual queue of men and women lining up to receive their evening meal, while others set up plastic folding tables and baskets of plastic cutlery and paper serviettes ready for that night’s food distribution.
The Sydney City Council says there are about 300 people sleeping on the streets of the CBD each night, with close to that number in city-based crisis accommodation. Across NSW, the number of people without adequate housing is more than 30,000. I am deeply grateful for the work of Anglicare and a number of city and suburban churches that provide assistance to people experiencing homelessness, or who are at risk of homelessness in their local area.
As I continued on my walk, I soon passed another queue. This time it was a queue of people waiting to enter the Louis Vuitton store on George Street. It made for a jarring contrast, though the two queues were barely 500 metres apart. …”
Read it all on pages 13 and 14.
Barbieland and the Garden of Eden
“Like millions of others, I fell captive to the marketing genius of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. On the movie’s opening day, I donned my pinkest outfit and joined my friends to see Barbie in all her glittery glory.
But for a movie purporting to be fun and light-hearted, I was fascinated to see how its characters also wrestled with questions of death, gender, and purpose. Barbieland reflects its own kind of Garden of Eden, inviting Christians to compare and contrast the film with Scripture while opening the door for worthwhile conversations. …”
– At The Gospel Coalition Australian Anna Hoole reflects on how the new Barbie movie could open the door to talk about something that’s truly important.
Moore College Sunday — 6th August 2023
Let’s not forget to pray for Moore College.
Moore College Sunday is coming up on Sunday 6th August and is a great time to remind congregations of the key role of the College in equipping men and women for a lifetime of Christian service.
– Download resources from this link.
The big Barbie movie – a Christian perspective
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“The Barbie movie has started big conversations around the world and is becoming a significant ‘cultural moment’ – opening up and influencing conversations about death, the gospel, the relationships between men & women and worldview.
We explore particularly the evangelistic opportunities and how Christians might best engage.
Caitlin Orr is an Anglican Deacon on maternity leave.
Sophia Russell is a journalist, mum and member of St Paul’s Carlingford in Sydney’s north west.
Jael Riegl is a member at Dapto Anglican Church, to the south of Sydney, and has recently graduated from a degree in English Literature, Law and Philosophy.”
One & All is all for Jesus
“As Christians around Sydney – and around the world – sing songs written by composers and music groups from Sydney Anglican circles, it’s always exciting to discover another addition to the mix.
One & All, a group born out of the parish centred on Christ Church, Springwood, started in early 2020…”
– Judy Adamson writes at SydneyAnglicans.net.
The book for concerned and confused parents
“The 1960s had the sexual revolution and the 2020s has brought us the gender revolution. So this is a fitting title for a book with the clear purpose to ‘provide the biblical basis for a contemporary Christian response to the complicated feelings and experiences of gender dysphoria’. …”
– Russell Powell writes about The Gender Revolution at SydneyAnglicans.net.
The Gender Revolution — book review
“There are times when I receive a new book and find myself saying ‘I don’t think we need a new book on that.’ After all, some topics have been covered so skillfully, repeatedly, and exhaustively that yet another book on the subject could only be overkill.
Yet sometimes I receive a new book and find myself saying, ‘I’m so glad someone has written a book on that!’ There are some topics that may not have been covered sufficiently or that may reflect such new realities that we are still awaiting good analyses.
The Gender Revolution falls squarely in the second category. …”
– Tim Challies draws attention to an important book from an Australian publisher. Most of our readers should be able to find a copy.
Related:
The authors speak with Dominic Steele on The Pastor’s Heart.
Review of J. C. Ryle, ‘Christmas Thoughts’
“J. C. Ryle was an unusual clergyman in that he could preach and write, and he could write in different styles while all the time being clear and engaging.
Andrew Atherstone has gathered and edited five of Ryle’s Christmas tracts written during the 1850s and 1860s, and published them for our benefit. …”
– Peter Barnes, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, writes a brief review at AP.
From the foreword of the book:
“This little book contains five of Ryle’s most popular Christmas tracts, originally published during the 1850s and 1860s. They have not been issued in this Christmas form since they were first printed more than a century and a half ago.”
Christmas Thoughts is published by Banner of Truth.
New to Ryle? See –
His Sermons Roused a Sleeping Church – John Piper.
1 Timothy 2 and the scholarly debate
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“1 Timothy 2:8-15 might be the most controversial New Testament passage.
There has been an enormous amount of scholarly attention on this section of scripture, especially over the last few decades, and there are practical questions that we can’t ignore in church life.
Lionel Windsor is a New Testament lecturer at Sydney’s Moore Theological College. Lionel teaches the pastoral epistles to third year students. So is abreast of the scholarly debate.
Lionel gave a super helpful seminar a few months ago at the Priscilla and Aquila Conference held by Moore College. We have linked to that seminar and Lionel’s notes here.
What are the elephants in the room – Culturally, Philosophically, in Scholarship.
What are the issues of interpretation? How do we approach the passage?
What issues surround 1 Timothy?
What is the significance of ‘quietness’?, ‘let her learn’?, ‘to teach’?
What is the connection between teaching and authority?”
“The Surprising Genius of Jesus” — Peter Williams
Tyndale House Principal Peter Williams gives three lectures at the Southern Baptist Seminary.
The title for his talks, “The Surprising Genius of Jesus“, is drawn from his forthcoming book.
Fascinating and enlightening. Well worth setting aside the time to watch and listen.
A growing mission field: reaching South Asian migrants
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“How do we connect for Jesus with the largest group of migrants coming into Australia?
In just in the last few years, the group of Hindus migrating from India have overtaken China and the UK to become the largest constituency of migrants. …”
What I’d be reading right now (if it had come out before the extended version)
“You might be aware that a couple of years ago, Victoria passed laws to ban certain kinds of conversation about gender and sexual identity—and other states like NSW are considering following suit. The scope of Victoria’s laws goes far beyond the fringe practice called ‘conversion therapy.’ …
Why am I mentioning this? Despite what you might assume, I’m not just lamenting the madness of modern society or trying to stir up some conservative outrage. Instead, I’m mentioning it because I believe it’s essential to ask: Why? Why are we, in our Western world, in this situation? To be more precise:
Why are we in a situation where ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ are so central to our collective modern view of what it means to be a human being that it can trump biological reality and even a person’s own convictions?…”
– At The Australian Church Record, Lionel Windsor points us to a book which will help you understand why our culture is where it is now – so that “through God’s grace, we can proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to real people in our world today”.
How we got the Bible: The story of Scripture
“Countless lives have been changed by the preaching of the word of God. Since human beings tend to look at the outside and not at the inside, we often attribute the power of this transformative teaching to the preacher. We all know on reflection, though, that the real power does not rest in humans but in God’s word itself.
Reading Scripture is the most immediate exposure to the word of God. In practice, this means picking up a physical book and opening it to a specific page, or opening up an app on our phones and scrolling to a specific location. In either case, we trust that the word has not been corrupted and that the message of the Bible we hold in our hands was not changed or lost altogether. We believe that we are reading the actual words that God spoke.
In what follows, we will think about what has gone before that moment when we open Scripture and read it. What happened to the Bible between the earliest times and the twenty-first century? How did God bring his word to us? The reverse of this question—how he brought us to his word—is part of our individual testimony. But the way in which God brought about the Bible is the story of his providence in history, played out over thousands of years. And by understanding what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is reasonable and justified to trust that the Bible in our hands is a translation of the trustworthy words of Scripture. We could talk about ten reasons why to trust the Bible. But it may be more effective if we understand the larger narrative of the history of the Bible. …”
– Dirk Jongkind, Vice Principal at Tyndale House in Cambridge, takes a long look at the story of how the Bible came to us. Very helpful and worth sharing.
Image: A 3rd Century fragment from Egypt, of Revelation chapter 1, in the Chester Beatty collection, Dublin. Photo with thanks to Kevin Murray.
This is the Word of the Lord
“Thanks be to God.
With great joy in his heart, a friend of mine recently shared with me about how his son became a Christian.
The teenager had been reading through the story of Achan’s sin (Josh. 7:1-26) at youth group and upon reflection on the nature of sin, had come to trust in Jesus for salvation. I was wonderfully surprised! Wonderfully, for the boy had made the most important decision of his life by believing in Christ. Surprised, because – somewhat to my shame – my initial impulse was to be surprised that the account of Achan’s sin could have been the instrument of his salvation. I think, upon reflection, that I had forgotten something significant about God’s Word: that it is good, all of it. But perhaps it is possible to forget the other good aspects of the Holy Scriptures too?…”
– At The Australian Church Record, Mark Earngey writes with great encouragement to treasure the Word of the Lord.
Your preaching is primarily for believers
“In certain circles, seeking to get unbelievers into church is seen as the highest possible goal. There is nothing better, according to some, when unbelievers come into the church and under the sound of the gospel. That, they aver, is what we ought to be about. At the risk of being deemed a contrarian, I just don’t think that is true.
What goes on inside the church is necessarily for the upbuilding of believers. The church is, after all, a gathering of believers. The world is not the church. What happens in the church is not primarily for the world. It is for believers.
This matters when it comes to our preaching.…”
– Here’s a short and encouraging article for preachers from Stephen Kneale in Oldham, Greater Manchester. (Link via Tim Challies.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…