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The Church as a Community of Truth: How We Learn to See Together
We’ve never had more access to truth—and yet less clarity about what is true. What if the issue isn’t just what we believe, but how we learn to see? This post explores why the church must become a community of truth, discerning and following Jesus together.
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How to Change the World
When Paul entered Ephesus, he didn’t bring a strategy—he looked for what God was already doing. Acts 19–20 shows us how real change happens: by surrendering to Jesus, being open to the Holy Spirit, and confronting the idols of money, power, and control. That’s how churches—and cities—are transformed.
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Why Christianity is not safe
Christianity was never meant to be safe. The book of Acts shows us a revolution of love, truth, healing, and surrender. When Jesus is truly Lord, everything changes—our priorities, our relationships, our mission. The early church didn’t play religious games. They lived lives that turned the world upside down. So should we.
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The Only Way Forward Is to Remember Who We Are
The future of the church won’t be found in preserving buildings or replicating past models—it will be found in recovering the heart that shaped them. Mary Ann Gibson’s faith, courage, and hospitality lit a fire in Tasmania. The question for us is: will we follow that same Spirit today?
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The Real Beginning of the Church
The first chapter of Acts reminds us that Jesus is still alive, still working, and still inviting us to be part of His kingdom. The church isn’t about carrying out a project — it’s about being witnesses to a different kind of life, rooted in sacrificial love, with Jesus still on the throne.
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You are not my enemy. You are my neighbour.
I have come to see that our church needs to be ready to relate to people at seven different levels:
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I know that my life does have a purpose and that often in the times I am least able to find the words to describe my calling, it is seen most clearly.
It has been a while since I wrote a Faith Reflection. It is not that I haven’t wanted to… I have just felt unable to find the words to explain to myself or anyone else what I have been experiencing. I went through a similar, but longer, period of wordlessness after arriving in Canada. I was changing. My world had dramatically changed. And it was all happening in a way that was beyond my ability to describe. I don’t feel like this is what should be happening for a leader. I feel like a leader should be operating from a plan that leads towards a clearly articulated goal. Over the…
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There are two things I wish everyone could say about their Mother.
It is Mothers Day on Sunday, which seems like a great excuse to write about what I’ve learned from the woman who profoundly shaped the person I have become: my mum. It is interesting to look at this photo, in which I guess I am about eight, Liz is around 6, Danni 4 and Nat is probably 2. Mum is in her mid thirties, about ten years younger than I am now. As I look back on the photo I glimpse in a fresh way what it must have meant for a young Tasmanian woman who grew up in the midst of a large extended family, church networks and family businesses…
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We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started…. #TSEliot
T.S. Eliot penned the words of the title of this reflection as part of his poem, “The Little Gidding.” The words have been running around my head lately because it they capture the trajectory of our next twelve months. In 1992 my journey in ministry really started with a journey to the top of Mt. Wellington in Hobart. I was in the city on placement after finishing Fusion’s six month bible college intensive. A friend had challenged me to consider the possibility of “digging in” in Hobart and committing to Fusion’s work for the long haul. I didn’t want to. I was scared. I knew I didn’t have the answers. So…
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Will the Christian church look in the mirror to discover things have changed?
Lately, I’ve been looking in the mirror and being surprised by what I see. The face staring back at me is 10 years older than I imagine it to be. Apparently, this is a normal phenomenon. I have a strong sense that the Christian church, too, is needing to look in the mirror. I’ve was in Calgary participating in a conference run by the Evangelical Missiological Society featuring, among other things, a series of lectures by Dr. Chris Wright (who is the author of a number of books about the implications of Biblical Theology for the practice of the Church). I appreciated Chris’s sessions. He gave a very thorough, biblical framework for mission…
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A Bigger Story: How the Real Gospel Changes Everything
I know that my life does have a purpose and that often in the times I am least able to find the words to describe my calling, it is seen most clearly.
Thank God for heroes like Rod Hoople who remind us all what the point of life really is.
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It’s not so much that the movement becomes an institution, its that it loses it’s verve that is the problem
Last week I wrote the reflection Institutions are anxious, Movements are prepared to take risks and it seemed to get a few people thinking. I received both very positive and very otherwise feedback about the reflection. I have been wrestling with what makes a movement and what makes an institution for a lot of the last decade. One of the things that becomes obvious in the conversation is that a lot hinges on how the words are used and in what context. I’m not sure its possible to have a movement without at least some organisation, but it certainly is possible to have an institution that is not a movement. In…
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The land of waffle: where you feel like you are doing something useful but you are just not sure for whom or why it happens to be useful.
I am continuing to reflect on what it means to accept the burden of responsibility for a specific community. Over the last couple of reflections I have unpacked two of the core understandings that I see as foundational for anyone who wants to take on a whole of community ministry: firstly that everything you do comes from Christ, and secondly its not what you do but who you are that is important. The next thing that is essential for someone who wants to take on ministry to a community is engagement with that community. I am bouncing off my reading of Nehemiah because he was the only recorded example of…
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I am continually surprised at how quickly I lose sight of Jesus and start making my own plans.
Over the next week or so I will be doing a series of posts about what it means to work towards changing a community. As I am preparing to head off to the U.K. to work with people who want to do just that, I want to have a crack at naming what I have learned over the last 20 years of ministry in a way that might help someone who is wanting to make a start. Much of what I have learned has come through the mistakes I have made, and I am certainly not holding myself up as a model, but I have discovered someone else who might…
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Talking ’bout a reformation
One of the things that I have enjoyed about doing the Arrow Leadership program are the number of ideas that bubble around in the back of my head in the weeks and months following one of the week long residential conferences. Last week Senior Pastor from Barrabool Hills Baptist church, Graham Clarke, made the assertion, that we are on the edge of a second reformation. This kind of talk is not new. In the late nineties a German church-growth researcher, Christian Schwarz, put forward the idea that we are in the era of a third reformation. He asserted that the first reformation took place in the 16th century when Martin…
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It’s good to hear from people who come from different worlds
I was thinking this morning just how important Arrow has been for me. That doesn’t mean it has been comfortable. I find my paradigm regularly challenged and somehow at the same time I find myself encouraged. You might remember I wrote a short reflection a couple of weeks ago on strategic planning and quoted Will Mancini who said: Have you ever put the wrong document in the paper shredder? There’s no way to get it back. You just can’t put the strips back together, not amount of time or tape will fix it. A similar thing happens to vision when you develop a strategic plan. The assumption is that more…
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We were reminded by a New York Billionaire that it is words and not ideas that change us.
I am glimpsing both the kind of family and kind of church I want to be part of
The politicians who failed to take action in America, actually made a choice to allow mass shooting events to happen.
