Following Jesus or the Pharisees? A 10 Point Check
In Christian circles it is usually considered a significant insult to suggest that someone is a Pharisee. Knowing the hard time these religious leaders gave to Jesus, and the harsh words he said about them in Matthew 23 – well, who would want to be a Pharisee? Yet if the essence of being a Pharisee is being legalistic and harshly zealous about faith, quick to dismiss others as beyond the pale and even quicker to declare oneself righteous, many would suggest that there are more than a fair few Christians who fall into this category. Now obviously they couldn’t mean either you or me, but...
Read MorePost Plebiscite Reflections…
Well, the results from the Australian Plebiscite on same sex marriage are in, and are very much as predicted with 61.6% in favour and 38.4% against, the only surprise being the astonishingly high participation rate of close to 80%. Clearly this was not an issue over which most Australians yawned in disinterest, grunting a dismissive “whatever”. I’ve written about the plebiscite before so have no intention of rehashing what I said here. What I’d rather do is ask if there is anything we can learn from the plebiscite, and ask how it might shape some of our interactions...
Read MoreChurch: From Members to Attenders…
Language reflects the way we think about things, and with that in mind I was struck when someone recently claimed that it has only been in the last 50 years or so that Christians have spoken about “going to this church” or “attending this church”. For the many hundreds of years before that, they would have said “I belong to this church”or “I am a member of this church”. If the claim is true (and I suspect it is) it’s an interesting change – from members to attenders. Think through the implications… Attenders are primarily...
Read MoreProtestants, Reformers or Transformers…
As the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation draws near (it is usually dated from Luther posting his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg on 31 October, 1517), it is worth asking if we are now primarily protestants (from protestors) or reformers. The Protestant Reformation involved both protest and reform. It was a protest against a corrupt religious system, and some of its particular practices, such as the sale of indulgences. Later it was a strong protest against the April 19th, 1529 reversal of the August 27, 1526 German Reichstag decree allowing each individual government...
Read MoreSigns of the Spirit’s Presence…
I was with the good folk of Mt Hawthorn Community Church this Pentecost Sunday, and being Pentecost, thought it would be helpful to ask if there are signs we can look for that indicate that the Spirit is at work. One of the lovely features of Mt Hawthorn is that they have a Q and A after the message, and it provoked lots and lots of discussion, making me think it would be worth posting my notes on the blog. So with a very light editing, here they are… A number of year ago noted evangelist Leighton Ford asked this question: “If God were to remove his Holy Spirit from the church, how...
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