“To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong” Joseph L Pearce **************************************** I have always had a great interest in science, particularly new discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics, the science of stars, black holes, how the universe works etc. and now in the current debates about quantum … Continue reading Mission and ‘Messy Theology’
The Unbound Church and the Divine Freedom
While there are variations, the missiological strategies of most mainline churches are primarily based on and operate with a fundamentally Christendom form structure mindset. This despite there being what might be called a ‘Divine Freedom’ to do things very differently. There are a number of arguments that can be made for this, for example- i) … Continue reading The Unbound Church and the Divine Freedom
The Striding Darkness
“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
He Is Risen!!
Went to church this day, day of all days. Moved again by the enormity of what Christ has done for us! Put against that reminded of the tawdriness, shallowness, triviality of our celebrity culture of small things. Driven to thanksgiving for the priceless gift from the God who flung the stars into space, the gift … Continue reading He Is Risen!!
The Problem With ‘All’
Sometimes when I’m thinking about the general missional unfruitfulness of Australian churches I wonder how much it is due to the prevalent use of the HDV bible. The HDV (Humpty Dumpty Version) has I believe had a seriously deleterious effect on our missional activities. Just to remind us, Humpty Dumpty is a character who … Continue reading The Problem With ‘All’
Planning to Fail In An Uberized Netflix World
Summer’s sun beats down, January days slip by, schools’ return looms near and down in the forest of parish-land there is the faint rustling of ministers stirring from their summer slumbers. First musings on sermon series seep into the consciousness, music leaders are planning their selections, Sunday school programs call for attention. A seemingly endless … Continue reading Planning to Fail In An Uberized Netflix World
The Eye of the Storm
It is 41 years since Cyclone Tracy hit the northern Australian city of Darwin, on that momentous Christmas Eve in 1974. The Christmas festivities were well underway as that massive hurricane moved over the Arafura Sea and then in the darkness made its final and unnoticed turn, and with 300 kph winds churned its way … Continue reading The Eye of the Storm
The Fear
“God is our refuge and strength” I still remember ‘the Fear’, the knot in the stomach that came with the drone of Vulcan bombers flying over the school yard, bombers that we knew were loaded with primed nuclear bombs just waiting for the order. It didn’t matter from whom it would come, American J F … Continue reading The Fear
A Dangerous Delusion
I have written previously of the fact that I believe in the church we have a Crisis. I use this word in the sense that we are at a point in the life of the church in Australia when we will go one of two ways, continued decline or revival, in the same way as … Continue reading A Dangerous Delusion
The 5th Dimension-How the West Was Lost
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
