Around the year 1748 Czar Nicolai of Russia built a fortress on the island of Suomen Linna in the Baltic Sea. It was built to mark and guard his new territory, the country we now call Finland, which he had gained from Sweden. In the middle of that sea-fortress is a Lutheran Church, and one … Continue reading War Zone 2019
“Soldiers of Christ arise and put your armour on, . . . . From strength to strength go on: Wrestle and fight and pray; Tread all the powers of darkness down And win the well fought day” … Continue reading An Army With Amnesia
As we enter the fading Twilight of 2017, all indicators are that the gospel influence on Australian society similarly fades as a rising tide of godless darkness consumes the erstwhile Christianized landscape. The metrics of this tide are well documented: the now well entrenched missional failure and the consequential decades-long chronic trend of decline in … Continue reading A New Babylonian Captivity
I woke up on Easter morning, the day of all days when we celebrate the resurrection of the Christ the Son of God, the greatest event in history. It is the day we rejoice in God’s victory over sin and death, the forgiveness of sins, the removal of our guilt and the promise of eternal … Continue reading The Resurrection and the Outbreak of War
It was hard to believe but there it was on the news. A new and previously unknown civilization had been found in the depths of the South American jungle. The people who discovered it named it ‘Morphtopia’. On hearing about this new people group mission organisations decided to make it a priority to send missionaries. … Continue reading The Morphtopian Odyssey
In his book ‘Mere Christianity’ the former atheist-turned-Christian C.S. Lewis writes: “One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death, disease and sin...This universe is at … Continue reading Prayer and the Dark Power
“The Sun’s rim dips, the stars rush out, At one stride comes the dark” How much I wonder are these lines from Samuel Coleridge’s poem “The Ancient Mariner” appropriate for our times. How much I wonder are our times similar in many ways to those of Augustine who writing when the Barbarians were at the … Continue reading The Striding Darkness
The 5th Dimension-How the West Was Lost The second half of the biblical Book of Daniel (of Lions’ Den fame) paints an apocalyptic view of middle-eastern history through the period of the successive Persian, Greek and Roman empires. This, what might be called ‘the series of the collapse of the empires’ (Chapters 7-12), should be … Continue reading The 5th Dimension-How the West Was Lost
In 563 AD an Irish prince set out with a bunch of friends in small coracles to cross the Irish Sea to the wild west coast and islands of what now is Scotland. The purpose of the dangerous journey was mission, to take the gospel to the fierce pagan tribes of Scotland. He and his companions set up a … Continue reading Back to the Celts for Our Future
The Barbarians are at the gates, the gates of western civilization. The 'Christendom'-founded and shaped civilization we call 'the West', denuded by the leaching out of its gospel underpinnings; its foundation of the Rock replaced by Post modern relativism and so no match for the flood of alternative 'truths' whether liberal humanism, radical Islam or … Continue reading A Problem With Leadership
unbounded church 