Values
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If you want next year to be different meet people and read books that challenge your “normal”.
I am a different person because of the books I have read and the people I have been exposed to, but there are plenty of books and people who haven’t changed me. They are the ones who I only engaged with superficially and who didn’t challenge my "normal."
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There is only one Christmas story that makes sense
I would get so upset as a child because I believed the wrong Christmas story... and life makes much more sense, and is also a lot more enjoyable when I understand the real revolution that Christmas brings to my life..
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Our Appetites are leading us towards destruction.
Gun and Roses had it right. Our Appetites are leading us towards destruction.
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These five practises that make Church harder are a good thing.
We live in a culture where commitment is not normal. This is not news. The decline in commitment has been well documented. Social researcher, Hugh Mackay, says that this current generation is… “growing up in a world of ever-expanding choices, they have made a virtue of keeping their options open, and they have adopted “what else is there?” as their general catchcry. It’s a question that comes up whether the topic is a course of study, a job, a sexual partner, a musical genre, an outing, a set of religious or political beliefs, a fashion label, a food fad or a make of car.” It is interesting that Mackay added…
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This is an important moment for the church to have a long hard look at itself and how it relates to same sex attracted people.
Up till now, I have been avoiding writing directly about the current same sex marriage and homophobia. One glimpse at Facebook will tell you that this is an issue that divides friends and even divides families. The reason this issue is so intense, is that on both sides people feel as though they are fighting a battle that goes to the very heart of their beliefs about themselves and the world. For many Gay and Lesbian people, the question of whether they are able to marry seems like the final battle in the war to be accepted as full members of the society. Things have come a long way in a…
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Social issues really do matter, however they are not the main challenge for the church.
It is interesting coming home into what feels like a highly charged political environment. Things feel very polarised both globally and nationally. There is a strange sense of foreboding at the moment as it looks like America and North Korea are, day by day, inching closer to a cliff and at the same time, a vitriolic debate about same-sex marriage is dominating talk radio and social media. Polarisation is not new, but it does feel like this is different. It feels like the whole nature and question of democracy is at stake at the moment. One of the big differences between Australia and the U.S. is that the fragmentation here seems to be…
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The only kind of church that will actually work here is a Fair Dinkum one.
We’ve been back in Australia for one month. We’ve been surprised at how big the adjustment has been, however it does feel like we are starting to find our bearings. Part of the adjustment has been the different place that the Christian church has in Australian society. The Aussie church is much more on the fringes here than it is in Canada. Our church has a “men’s shed” program, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a shed in someone’s backyard that blokes get together in. In some places guys get together and build stuff or fix stuff… fortunately in our church the guys get together to eat, drink and…
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Don’t let the dark side of consumerism rob you of your life. Life is for living now.
Article in todays St. Albert Gazette Next week we are heading back to Australia after being here for four years. We have loved our time in St. Albert. This is a very special place and you are served by some remarkably dedicated and gifted leaders both in the church and in the broader community. The Good Neighbour Project is remarkable (goodniehgbourproject.org) and I don’t think there is any doubt that St. Albert is the Block Party capital of the world. I doubt that any other city on the planet could point to over 50% of streets having participated through the course of a decade. It has been so encouraging to see…
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The moments when you decide your core values are actually the biggest turning points of your life.
Every now and then life takes a major turning point. Something changes that means every other aspect of your life is affected. From an external perspective, my family and I are in a moment like that right now. In eight days time we will be boarding a Qantas flight to head back to Australia. I will begin my new job as Senior Pastor of Citywide Baptist church, Hobart, a week later. On the surface it looks and feels like a very big thing. It feels like a life turning point. At a deeper level though, I think real life turning points look much less dramatic. Last Sunday I gave my…
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A message to those who Kill us: Thank You, We Love You and We are Praying for you
As the world struggles to come to terms with another senseless bombing, I thought I would post the remarkable words of Father Boules George, a Coptic priest, speaking the day after a bomb killed 49 worshippers in his church in Alexandria. I spoke on Sunday about the paradoxical heart of the Gospel, and the words of this man are the clearest example I have seen for a long time of what it means to be an agent of God’s love in the face of violence and brokenness. Fr. George demonstrates with remarkable clarity how the love of God defeats the power of violence and hate. A MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO KILL…
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You can have a whole life, or you can regularly watch porn. You can’t do both.
While I am pleased to be able to say that porn hasn't had a hold over me for many years now, I am embarrassed to have to admit that I fell for something so stupid and directly opposed to my faith.
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There are 6 choices you need to make if you don’t want to be sucked in by Trump (or anyone else).
There is a seismic shift underway in how the world looks at the United States, how the United States looks at itself and how everybody understands truth. I used to teach people about Public Relations. I would teach that we have “media” because they “mediate” truth. These days, while that might be the origin of the word, the reality of the function is not so simple. Yesterday I watched one of my favourite journalists, Chuck Todd, reach a point where he declared that he no longer had the words, quoting a sports commentator who once declared “I can’t believe what my eyes are seeing.” It seems as though the biggest…
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Are you ready for another trip around the Sun? #HappyNewYear #Plansfor2017
I love this time of year. I love it for two reasons, the first is that it’s not a normal time, it’s kind of a twilight zone, an in-between time where one year is really over and another hasn’t properly started. In a moment like this there is the opportunity to spend some time reflecting. The other reason I love this time of year is the chance to sit down in front of the cricket (I know its not a very Canadian thing) or over a jigsaw puzzle or board game with family in a very relaxed kind of way that doesn’t seem to happen in the frenetic pace that…
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It is important not to sentimentalise the baby born in Bethlehem, but to recognise him for who he is: the instigator of a revolution of love.
The front yard is blanketed in snow and there is extreme cold weather warning for this part of the world for the next 24 hours. Christmas must be coming. As we come to the end of a year in which politics and power seemed to dominate every news bulletin, we find ourselves again being reminded of a little baby born in Bethlehem who gained more followers than any politician in history, yet never grasped for power. That wasn’t how the Messiah was supposed to act. Lots of Jews had been waiting expectantly for a baby to be born, but not this baby, not this way. They expected a baby who would…
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For the foreseeable future, we cannot just assume that people who proclaim themselves to be authorities are telling the truth.
On October 30, the CBS news in America announced that an invasion had begun. From the moment the broadcast started the audience of about 32 million people was transfixed in horror as they began to understand that the future of the whole world was now being threatened. People started to panic. Once the director of the programming realized the impact of the broadcast, he made the choice to make a public announcement. “This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that *The War of the Worlds* has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be: The Mercury Theatre’s own radio…
