How do you react when you notice that you or your church has a dull, dry, inactive faith, even though you are committed to God's word? Elvis, in his song, A Little Less Conversation, gives us a model for one way that we could try to solve the problem:

A little less conversation, a little more action,
All this aggravation ain't satisfaction in' me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me

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If there's ever been a mismatch, it was the union of Nabal and Abigail (1 Samuel 25). You can almost see the announcement: “Stupid, stubborn, surly skinflint marries brainy, brave, benevolent beauty”. It's as if the characters of Folly and Wisdom stepped out of the pages of Proverbs and got hitched. Those TV advertisements with the clever wife rolling her eyes over her bumbling husband have nothing on this!

What can we learn from their ill-fated union? How can I be Wisdom rather than Folly? And what do I do if I'm Wisdom married to Folly?

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This is the fourth post in Mark Baddeley's series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read part 1, part 2 and part 3.)

We see a sign of this incompatibility of the two positions of egalitarianism and complementarianism in a recent post on the Ugley Vicar’s blog. He reports a conversation where a prospective ordination candidate in the Church of England was informed that they could not be ordained if they did not agree with women bishops. This was hardly a surprise to me, I have heard similar reports back in Australia coming from dioceses that were seeking to have women bishops (and I'm hardly Mr Networker). What this suggests is that usually, if not in absolutely every instance, when a diocese or denomination is close to having the political numbers to introduce women bishops, it makes support for women being bishops a requirement for ordination. Complementarians are henceforth excluded from that structure—first of all from the clergy and, eventually, from the laity as laypeople eventually find it impossible to find a church where complementarianism is not treated as a form of sin. Only those complementarians prepared to submit to a women bishop's authority and, one suspects, not be too vocal about their view that their bishop is sinning by being a bishop in the first place, can be ordained once women bishops are being set up.

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This month, on October 6, it was 500 years since the birth of the Protestant martyr, Rowland Taylor, in 1510. From Northumberland, Rowland Taylor earned his law degree and then a doctorate from Cambridge in the 1530s. He also married Margaret, niece of William Tyndale (who translated the Bible into English, and for it, was burnt by Henry VIII in 1536). But as evangelical thought developed under Henry and flourished under Protestant King Edward VI, Taylor served each of the three great Bishops of the English Reformation: Latimer, Cranmer (who ordained him) and Ridley. From 1544 he was the Rector of Hadleigh in Suffolk, a post he remained in till his arrest. He also served more broadly as Archdeacon.

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Is it better to choose a more difficult ministry, or an easy one? Is it more godly to choose suffering over comfort when we make decisions about life and ministry? After all, suffering makes us more like Jesus, and surely that's good for us, isn't it?

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This is the third post in Mark Baddeley's series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read part 1 and part 2.)

We are looking at why various Christian institutions are going to divide over the question of women's public ministry. In the previous post I argued that the fight over whether women should wield authority over men in the church is a high stakes debate. It is fundamentally a fight over the question of authority and equality—whether authority and necessary submission must always be linked to genuine inferiority. Those championing women's ordination generally believe that authority can only exist when one person is inferior to another—a view that I will classify as egalitarianism. Those opposed believe that authority and real equality can coexist—a view that I will classify as complementarianism.

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Here's something really interesting in Mark's Gospel that my lovely wife Bronwyn noticed when she was reading the Bible the other day. Close to the beginning of Mark, in chapter 1, Jesus meets a man with a skin disease:

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” (Mark 1:40)

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This is the second post in Mark Baddeley's series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read part 1.)

Complementarians like me see egalitarians as reading the Bible under the shadow of the Enlightenment. Their notion of ‘equality’ is not value-free, or intuitively obvious, or true at some pre-critical presuppositional level. It is a view of equality that was articulated in the Enlightenment as part of that movement's attack on Christianity. So, for the complementarian there is a close relationship between egalitarianism and theological liberalism—not all egalitarians are liberals; but almost all liberals are egalitarians; and both read the Bible in light of convictions that lie at the heart of the modern liberal-democratic state. For both movements culture and modern reason define all the key terms, and the Bible is then understood in light of that first step made by culture. God isn’t just a westerner and a convinced democrat, he is an ideal example—the kind of guy any western cultural liberal would be proud to know; the very model of a modern major general writ large.

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Have you seen Mark Dever's chat with Mark Driscoll and James McDonald about multi-site churches? It's excited plenty of interweb comment, not least because of the rather vigorous way Dever is set upon by the other two in a kind of jokey, jovial but still half-serious way.

(‘Multi-site’ means planting a new congregation or church service at a new location, but having the lead pastor from the mother church still do the bulk of the preaching, usually by means of a video feed. It's a growing and controversial practice in US churches. Is it healthy? Useful? Biblical?)

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What do you do when you get to a bit of the Bible you don't understand? When a Bible passage makes you feel uncomfortable?

I know what I do: I tend to avoid those bits of the Bible. Sometimes I ignore particular verses, sometimes I try not to think about certain passages, sometimes I even keep away from whole books. It's like a painful tooth; you learn to stop biting on it after a while.

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One of the various hats I wear is Chairman of the Council at St Catherine's School, Waverley. And we're hiring.

To be specific, we're seeking to fill two exciting new roles in 2011 that I'd like to tell you about. Maybe you're the person we're looking for; or you might know someone who is.

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This is the first post in Mark Baddeley's series on complementarianism and egalitarianism.

As I write this it looks overwhelmingly likely that the Church of England will embrace women bishops and—despite commitments made when women priests were introduced—will introduce women bishops without any structural solutions for those who disagree with the change. A structural separation is imminent. Those opposed to women's ordination—Conservative Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics—will leave the Church of England (unless they find a technically illegal mechanism to stay in, such as consecrate their own bishops, who would be Anglican but not Church of England). Consequently, the Church of England will be composed almost entirely by those who agree with, and support, the ordination of women and their role as bishops. Similar moves are afoot in other denominations in different parts of the world.

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Euthanasia is a topic that is not likely to go away any time soon. Our friend or colleague, normally keen to avoid thinking about their own death, may now be talking about their right to end their life at some point. So how can we move a conversation about assisted suicide to the gospel? Tony Payne has some practical (and humorous) advice in an article first published in The Briefing in 1995.

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I loved Ben's 10 in 2 post the other day. But I have to admit I'm more a 2 in 10 guy. I find evangelism hard. My courage fails easily. But one of my biggest problems is just not spending time with those outside the kingdom.

In my neck of the woods, the Connect09 campaign last year at least had the impact of making me think about getting to know the people in my own street.

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On Thursday 2 September, Mikey Lynch emailed me, and three other mates, to point us to a blog. He said, “I thought you'd be interested in getting a feel for the kind of conversations [people] are having about secular work vs gospel work”. This thread was a reflection on the Katoomba Convention Centre Conference called Engage.

The five of us sent a series of emails to each other pondering the strengths and weaknesses of our own leadership and of the church at large. I thought I'd share with you the email I wrote. In the email I sort of just went ‘splat’. I guess it is a distillation of three and a half years of conversations with hundreds of people around Australia about full-time gospel work vs bi-vocational, MTS's highlights and lowlights, the impact of Mark Driscoll's 2008 visit, Gen Y's view of church leadership … plus other stuff. Throw your two bobs worth in after you've read it.

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With the legalization of euthanasia once more being debated in parliament, I thought it might be a good time for some vintage Briefing articles on the topic.

In 1995, Neil Chambers examined the issues surrounding the value of a human life, the pervasiveness of sin in our decisions, compassion for those suffering, and the role of personal autonomy.

It's a great run-down of the reasons a Christian ought not be comfortable with euthanasia, and the biblical and ethical arguments haven't changed much in fifteen years.

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It's sometimes said, “Show me your songs, and I will tell you your theology”.

There was very clear theology being expressed in the songs chosen for the services of Morning and Evening Prayer each day for this General Synod.

Take this …

Jesus calls us to each other:
Found in him are no divides.
Race and class and sex and language
Such are barriers he derides.

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Forgive me the self-indulgence, but I'm pleased to say we finally reached a motion I gave notice of on the first day of Synod on the last day! After a bit of debate, it was passed unanimously.

Here's my original motion (I don't have the text of the amendments to hand, but they basically only added a few extra words about telling the pollies what we passed.)More »

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If there was a theme for today at General Synod, it was the search for unity.

For example, we sought unity in encouraging a wide variety of ‘fresh expressions’ of church. In other circles this covers what might be called church planting and innovation, as well as other initiatives like “Back to Church Sunday”.

There was an agreed desire to give permission for new and creative Christian fellowships and ministries. In this, we heard of some impressive and sacrificial examples of meeting human need. People felt we were talking about core business.

However the emphasis was all about how to do it, especially on what leadership skills were needed. Agreement in the gospel was taken for granted, yet is the very thing that appears to be lacking across the denomination.

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It's really hard in a political environment to accurately assess spiritual progress. Synod is about politics, and I do not mean that negatively.

But it means it's tempting to assess everything in terms of what you won and lost in the debates. And overall this General Synod has been going pretty well for evangelicals, I think.

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There were many interesting items on Monday which got our blood pumping faster:

• an amendment to our Solemnisation of Marriage Canon
• a discussion of the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant
• an attempt to amend section 63 of the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia
• a motion regarding Defence Force Chaplaincy
• a motion regarding caring for creation.

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Here are my reflections on the first two days of General Synod.

The Archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall, is the Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, and so chairs the General Synod. He sent a very clear message in his opening Presidential Address.

According to the official media release, he “called for unity”, advocating “respect for diversity and the importance of continuing to belong together in a greater whole”.

But are there limits to diversity?

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The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia begins today, Saturday 18 September 2010, in Melbourne, and I'm one of 61 of the Sydney Diocesan representatives: 30 lay, 30 clergy, and 1 bishop of the diocese.

It only meets every 3 years, and just like last time, I plan to blog my way through!

One good thing is that it's a day shorter this time than the seven last time! Finances not in such good shape I think!

I'm looking forward to Melbourne's trams; to seeing if the coffee's better than Wollongong's; to catching up with an old student minister friend, now serving with AFES in Melbourne; to meeting a Melbourne Diocese rep I've got to know via the web; and hopefully a chance to visit a second hand bookshop or two (but there's not much spare time!).

As we commence, here's a good question: what is a general synod? Or, if you belong to another denomination, what kind of thing is your general assembly, or whatever you call it?

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The ministry recruitment landscape in Sydney, NSW and the ACT is changing.

It is very exciting. In 2010 MTS changed it's Sydney conference calendar. Instead of running a residential SPUR Conference (formerly called Club 5 or Challenge) on the October long weekend we decided to replace it with a non-residential conference in May.

“Why?” you ask. Well, there were several reasons.

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I think one of the best pieces of advice I received as I began to get involved in Christian ministry was this: “Make sure you are involved in some ministry outside your own patch”.

(By ‘patch’, my advisor meant my normal sphere of ministry—be it my neighbourhood / campus / school / workplace … whatever. In my case, my patch was my local parish, and the outside ministry I got involved in was teaching Moore College ThC courses to pastors in Kenya.)

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Hell is a sphere of separation and deprivation, of pain and punishment, of darkness and destruction, and of disintegration and perishing. The vocabulary of the New Testament includes: darkness outside, weeping and grinding of teeth, destruction of body and soul, eternal fire, fire of hell, condemned to hell, forfeiting eternal life, the wrath of God, everlasting destruction away from the presence of the Lord, perishing, separation, blackest darkness. Sinclair Ferguson, 9Marks e-journal

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This is the sixth post in Jean's series on women in the Bible. (Read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth.)

Hannah is a nobody, the insignificant wife of an insignificant member of an insignificant tribe. Compared to Eve, mother of all living; Sarah, mother of God's people; or Deborah, judge of Israel—who is she? Just a barren women loved by her husband but jeered at by a younger, fruitful wife (1 Sam 1:1-8).

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In the September issue of The Briefing, Tony Payne writes about the role of emotions in being a Christian, and unpacks a small amount of theologian Jonathan Edwards' thoughts on the topic.

If Tony's article has gotten you interested in ‘emotions’ vs ‘affections’, here's a longer exploration by Kirsten Birkett on Edwards and feelings, published previously in The Briefing:

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In January 2010 I set myself a goal that has transformed my diary, my thinking, my reading and the way my home operates.

In January 2010 I pledged to work at the goal, prayerfully and dependently, of bringing ten people into the Kingdom of God by 31 December 2011.

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Guest blogger Mikey Lynch, one of the directors of The Geneva Push, talks about the network's approach to church planter assessment.

Jai and his wife Jay-Ellen are planning to plant a church in Mackay in 2011. Better them than me! It's a huge task. But that's the exciting thing about The Geneva Push: having a chance to rub shoulders with all these different people, with all these crazy plans, and being able to play a part in helping them on their way.

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There are so many reasons for losing sleep it's not really worth listing them. You're either getting enough sleep or you're not. And if you aren't, an awful lot of the Christian life can feel very difficult indeed. Shorter tempers, less self-control, sense of life being out of control, feeling sorry for oneself, irritable, unkind, not listening… Sleep is such a good gift from God if only because it makes so many, many things easier. Prayer is one such thing. What can we do when we aren't praying because we aren't getting the sleep we need?

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Are you a stress-thrower or a stress-absorber?

A stress-thrower blames things on others and expresses stress in anger; a stress-absorber blames things on themselves and expresses stress in anxiety (I think I've got that right!). This useful distinction was taught to me by Tom Cannon, a chaplain I used to work with in university ministry. In our family, we have both stress-throwers and stress-absorbers.

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This is the fifth in Nicole's series on ‘missional lifestyle’. Read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

In this series I've been working my way slowly through various facets of life (home, education, work, sport, etc.), talking about the opportunities that each presents for being involved in the lives of others for their good and their salvation, and the idolatries that have the potential to destroy us and our witness by luring our hearts away from Christ. In this post, having set out a general framework and taken a brief look at the opportunities and idolatries of the home, I want to turn to the topic of education (our own and our children's) and the opportunities that it provides for mission.

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Learning to pray for others is one of the first things we learn as Christians: we see it commended on every other page of the New Testament; we see it modelled in every other meeting of Christians we participate in; and Christian parents model it to their children from birth.

Have you ever stopped to think about why we pray for others, however? Or why we ask prayer from others? I was made to really consider the question when I first read through 2 Corinthians 1. And what the Apostle Paul says there continues to provoke me to thought and wonder every time I read it.

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(Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.)

Does God forgive us based upon our repentance? We covered a couple of problems with such an idea in our previous post. This time around, I want to canvass what I would suggest is the real killer to the whole idea: it overturns justification by grace through faith alone.

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Mexico in the 1940s was a country trying to come to grips with the 20th century. While discoveries of oil and a developing infrastructure encouraged foreign investment, basic social indicators like literacy rates, health care and basic wages demonstrated that for the vast majority of Mexicans, life was still a great struggle. It was in this context that Ávila Camacho was elected president in 1940.

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(Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.)

We have been considering the question of whether we can or should forgive in the absence of repentance by the guilty party. We began by looking at whether we forgive in exactly the same way that God does, and then turned to consider the question in light of a series of pastoral issues. With this post and the next, we will conclude by addressing the really big question in all this—not what we do, but what God does. Is God's forgiveness of us dependent upon our repentance?

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For the past three Saturdays, we've been looking at contributions to the old Briefing ‘People in Ministry’ column, which focused on evangelical ministry worked out in practice. First David McDonald told us about the impetus behind Canberra Christian Youth Convention. Then Ken Simpson talks about ministry to doctors. Then Michael Blake explains how he uses school Scripture to reach parents. This week, Archie Poulos discusses evangelism to Greeks in Sydney in the late 80s:

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After a self-imposed period of reflective meditation in the wilderness (i.e. too absolutely flat chat to even think about posting), I'm back. But not, alas, to say anything profound. I'm after some advice.

I've been working on the text of a ‘Christmas tract’ that we (i.e. Matthias Media) are hoping to publish by early November. It's something for congregations to use in Christmas evangelism, to hand out at Christmas services, to use in Christmas letter-box drops, and so on. When we've done this in the past (and we've done it most years recently), we've tended to have a fairly strong Christmas theme to the tract: bouncing off a Christmas carol, or focusing on the birth of babies, and so on.

This time, I'm thinking of trying something a little different. And I'm after some feedback. Do you think it works? More particularly, does it work as something to hand out over the Christmas season when the name ‘Jesus’ creeps back into our popular culture however briefly. Any suggestions on how to improve it? So without further ado …

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This is the fifth post in Jean's series on women in the Bible. (Read the first, second, third and fourth.)

Deborah, judge of Israel, is a poster-girl for egalitarianism in Judges 4-5. She's undoubtedly female, and she's a leader of God's people: a judge who delivers God's rulings, and a prophetess who speaks God's words. Like the other judges, she's used by God to deliver his people when they turn from their idolatry and cry to him for rescue from their enemies. Her husband is virtually absent from her story and, if she had any children, they aren't mentioned. If the New Testament seems to say that women shouldn't teach or have authority in the church, surely Deborah shows that these restrictions are cultural and can be laid aside in our more enlightened society!

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(Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.)

The time has come to conclude the pastoral dimension of the question of forgiveness being linked to repentance. The final issue is whether we are doing the wrong thing by forgiving someone because then we simply sweep the sin under the carpet and don't challenge them, thereby removing the opportunity for them to repent. For those who have followed this discussion over the last three posts, you are probably in a position to see what my response is going to be. But we'll briefly spell it out anyway.

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In these Sola Saturday posts, we've been looking at past contributions to the old Briefing ‘People in Ministry’ column, which focused on evangelical ministry worked out in practice. Firstly, David McDonald told us about the impetus behind Canberra Christian Youth Convention. Last week, Ken Simpson talks about ministry to doctors. This week, Michael Blake explains how he uses school Scripture to reach parents:

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(Read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.)

We come now to the third installment of our reflection upon pastoral issues and the fifth installment answering the question of whether forgiveness can or should only be extended when repentance has taken place.

Let's begin with an unusual, but not unheard-of, situation: someone sins against you; when challenged, they repent, but later withdraw that repentance either explicitly or by their actions. How are we supposed to address this situation if forgiveness is based on repentance?

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(Read parts 1, 2 and 3.)

We've been considering the question of whether forgiveness can or should occur without repentance. Last time around, we looked at family life. Let's turn from the everyday to the extreme. What do we say to the person who is outrageously sinned against? What do we say to the person who was abused as a child, the person who has been raped, the person who survives a murder attempt from a loved one, the person whose spouse commits adultery (and while we're at it, given that many people think that adultery is not sufficient grounds for divorce, the view that forgiveness can only occur when there has been repentance means that we're then left with the position that a spouse must not forgive an unrepentant adulterous spouse, but must not divorce them either—a view that people may want to champion, but they should still recognize it is somewhat weird pastoral advice), and the person who has been betrayed by someone close to them?

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If you've just joined us, in this next lot of Sola Saturday posts, we are looking at past contributions to the old Briefing ‘People in Ministry’ column, which focused on evangelical ministry worked out in practice.

Last week, David McDonald told us about the impetus behind Canberra Christian Youth Convention from several decades ago. This week, Ken Simpson talks about a ministry to doctors that also began in the late 80s.

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This is the sixth post in Peter Bolt's series on the New Atheists. (Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.)

Once upon a time, way back at the beginning, the Christian movement was charged with novelty. Nowadays, it is charged with antiquity. In both cases, its ‘timing’ apparently shows it is wrong.

The message of Jesus' resurrection was launched into the Graeco-Roman world, in which the antiquity of classical culture was paraded as a demonstration of its truth and a guarantee of the future of the Empire. The Christian message was criticized for being ‘novel’, and so a troublesome threat for the stability of that world. One of the charges levelled at Jesus before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was that he had misled the Jewish nation by claiming to be a king (Luke 23:2). When Jesus rose from the dead, he was proclaimed far and wide as ‘Lord and Christ’. When this new message about a king other than Caesar came to Thessalonica on its way to Athens, the crowds rioted, saying its preachers had “turned the world upside down” by this novelty (Acts 17:6).

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(Read parts 1 and 2.)

In this meta-series, we have been exploring the question of whether we (and God) can or should forgive someone when they have not repented. This time around, we are going to turn our attention to some difficult pastoral situations and ask how they work when we hold that forgiveness can only take place when there has been repentance.

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I grew up with one brother and no sisters. I love my brother, and never longed for a sister (unlike my daughter, who loves her three brothers, but has always wanted a twin sister). But I've always wondered what it would be like to have a sister.

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If the July/August issue of The Briefing has already reached you, I hope you are enjoying its contents and are being challenged to think how you can, in the words of our mission statement, “abandon your life to the honour and service of Christ in daily holiness and decision-making”.

Given that our next issue will not reach you until September, I thought it might be worth continuing the theme of June Sola Saturdays and take a look at some other examples of people who have given up their lives for the sake of Christ. While perusing some of our earliest issues (unfortunately not all Briefing editors are blessed with a mental index of every article we've ever published!), I stumbled across our old ‘People in Ministry’ column, which aimed to “[look] at evangelical ministry being worked out in practice” (Briefing #0, April 1988). I thought it might be encouraging for you to re-read (or read for the first time) some of these.

First up is David McDonald, writing in 1988 on the impetus behind the formation of Canberra Christian Youth Convention. This convention ran for a number of years and then morphed into a general convention, and then separate men's and women's youth conventions. I spoke to David recently, and he said that his and his family's involvement in these conventions really gave them a platform for ministry in Canberra. They ended up moving there in 1990 and have been there for the past 21 years.

If you live in a place where going to conventions is not the norm, perhaps you could consider pinching this idea. Who knows what impact God's word will have on your city?

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(Read part 1.)

As we head into the issue of whether we should or even can forgive someone who has sinned against us but hasn't repented, let's begin with one of the key principles that people raised in our first post—that we forgive others as God in Christ forgave us. As it is stated in Colossians 3:13, we are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility and so on while “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”.

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Jesus Christ was a marketing specialist. (George Barna¹)

Recently, a thoughtful Christian blogger raised the question of why a lot of pastors are so suspicious of marketing and are reluctant to use congregation members with professional skills in the area (whereas we are happy to use the plumbers, IT guys and musos).

I sympathized. In the past, I have been grateful to have graphic designers (some within our congregation) design a good website for our church, as well as brochures and invitations. But to answer the blogger's question, here is why we are suspicious.

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Many moons ago, my wife wrote a post on forgiveness. One of the issues that it raised for people was whether forgiveness could take place in the absence of repentance by the offender. My dear wife kindly semi-promised people that I would one day blog on the topic . So here we are, with a series of posts designed to unpick why I am convinced that forgiveness must take place in the absence of repentance and that this issue goes to the heart of a Reformed understanding of the biblical gospel.

Let's begin by reviewing the concerns people raised over the course of last year about the prospect that we should forgive someone when they haven't repented. These are great points that deserve careful consideration. We'll begin with the comments that ensued from Jen's post and conclude with a post by a fellow Sola Panellist.

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This is the final post in our series on giving up your life for Christ in anticipation of the July/August The Briefing. In our first post, Robert Doyle looked at the concept of giving up your life in the context of worship. Then Dave Andrews tackled the important question “What should I be doing with my time [as I give up my life]?” Last week, Philip Miles dealt with giving up one's life in missionary service and the problems with the theology of ‘the call’. This week, a lead ballooner with his/her tongue firmly in cheek explains how giving up one's life for the sake of one's kids is an integral part of giving up one's life for Christ:

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It's well known that John Newton was the captain of a slave trading ship who converted to Christ and eventually became an Anglican minister. Some people condense the whole story romantically by implying the horrific storm at sea that spurred Newton to first turn to God immediately led to a mature and complete repentance from his evil ways—such that he wrote ‘Amazing Grace’ as an expression of his gratefulness for being saved. But for some time after Newton's storm-driven adoption of Christianity, he continued to make his living from the slave trade.

However, I believe it is accurate to say that soon after his conversion, he did begin to treat his slaves better. Yet it was only 32 years after his conversion—long after he'd given up seafaring and become an Anglican minister, and some years after he wrote ‘Amazing Grace’—that in 1780, Newton began to express regrets about his part in the slave trade. In 1785, he began to fight against slavery by speaking out against it, and he continued to do so until his death in 1807 (the year of the trade's abolition).

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We do not have an original copy of the New Testament. The New Testaments we read are translations of the Greek New Testament, which is itself an edited text compiled from several thousand manuscripts that have survived from ancient times. There is nothing at all abnormal about this. Still less is it insidious, suspicious, or grounds for uncertainty about the Christian message. It is, in fact, exactly what you would expect from an ancient text. In addition, the fact that such a large number of manuscripts lie behind the Greek New Testament is a very good thing.

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(Updated with correct link to ‘To God Be the Glory’ and link to Sandy's post on ‘Amazing Grace’.)

Nothing gets a debate going like opinions on church music. But here's an idea that's found very little resistance at church; instead, it's received lots of support: the hymn of the month.

The idea originally came from Covenant Life Church (founded by CJ Mahaney and now pastored by Josh Harris). Rather than relying just on contemporary songs, they saw value in hymns that have proven themselves over generations as true and powerful. They also saw memorizing hymns as one way to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16). They used a different hymn over 10 months, providing a brief background to each hymn and also making a recording of these hymns available for MP3 download on a free or “pay what you think it is worth basis”.

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This is the third in our Sola Saturday series on giving up your life for Christ in anticipation of the July/August issue of The Briefing. In our first post, Robert Doyle looked at the concept of giving up your life in the context of worship. Then Dave Andrews tackled the important question “What should I be doing with my time [as I give up my life]?” This week, Philip Miles deals with giving up one's life in missionary service and the problems with the theology of ‘the call’.

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This is the fourth in Nicole's series on ‘missional lifestyle’. Read parts 1, 2 and 3.

In my last post, I suggested some of the opportunities that our homes provide for serving God in mission within his world. But a home doesn't just create opportunities for mission, it also creates opportunities for idolatry. Instead of being a place where God is worshipped and served, home can itself become a god we worship—or a shrine for the worship of other gods.

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The UK government has launched a review into occupational Health & Safety laws (OH&S). It seems to be a very popular move. Health is good. Safety is good. But the multiplication of rules purportedly designed to enforce it often leads to madness.

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This is the fourth post in Peter Bolt's series on the New Atheists. (Read the first, second and third.)

‘Fundamentalism’ is a swear word. It takes many forms, theistic and atheistic. Basically it is rationalism in a different guise.

As is often the case when a word becomes a swear word, there is also a positive sense of the word that lies buried beneath the invective. ‘Queenslander’ means something entirely different on State of Origin night than when I am looking for a holiday destination. A ‘fundamentalist’ (positively speaking) is someone who holds that there are certain ‘fundamentals’ that ought to believed, for these give shape to their world view. In this positive sense, there are ‘fundamentals’ in any branch of knowledge (= science)—whether about God, or not about God.

Within ‘theistic’ circles, there is a ‘fundamentalist’ mindset that includes a very tight definition of what the New Testament (indeed, the Bible) should be like. It goes like this: if the Bible is God's word and if God is perfect, then the Bible should contain no errors at all. As noble as this sounds, this is to decide the question beforehand. That is, rightly or wrongly, it needs to be recognized for what it is: an a priori argument.

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We have been looking at the idea of giving up your life for the sake of Christ in advance of the July/August Briefing. Last week, Robert Doyle looked at the concept of giving up your life in the context of worship; this week, Dave Andrews tackles an important question that should prey on the minds of all Christians: as I give up my life for Christ, what should I be doing with my time?

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This is the fourth post in Jean's series on women in the Bible. (Read the first, second and third.)

I met a remarkable woman the other day. To be honest, she's not the kind of woman I normally feel comfortable with. She's had an immoral past, a pagan background, and a life of change and crisis. She's brave, shrewd and outspoken. I might as well come out and say it: she was once a prostitute. But I reckon she knows more about God than any number of women from safe Christian backgrounds (like me).

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Two recent events have got me thinking about the way we advertise our Christian activities. Firstly, I was in the market for a new computer, having faced a blank screen a few too many times. Secondly, I was working on a brochure for the work I'm involved in here in Latin America (www.moclam.org). The brochure was for prospective students, interested enquirers and possible supporters.

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Why the need for a collect on the regulation of bodily functions?

It's because people like me do actually pray—often with some fervour—about the bodily functions of the children for whom they are responsible. That's right, we pray about the absence, presence, frequency, infrequency, texture, colour and quantity of poo. We do it mostly because such things can flag a problem in young children—especially when they are only a few weeks old (at least that's why I pray about such things; others may have different reasons).

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Has the June issue of The Briefing reached your mailbox yet? If so, I hope you are finding it stimulating reading.

We in the editorial team are gearing up for the July/August double issue, which is on the topic of giving up your life. You may recall that The Briefing's mission statement goes something like this:

We seek to persuade all Christians of the truth of God's purposes in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible, and equip them with high-quality resources, so that by the work of the Holy Spirit they will:

• abandon their lives to the honour and service of Christ in daily holiness and decision-making
• pray constantly in Christ’s name for the fruitfulness and growth of his gospel
• speak the Bible's life-changing word whenever and however they can—in the home, in the world and in the fellowship of his people.

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This is the third post in Peter Bolt's series on the New Atheists. (Read the first and second.)

There are many slippery words—words that appear to mean so many things, you begin to wonder if they mean anything.

Even ‘science’ can be one that gets quite greasy. It seems pretty slippery in some New Atheist discussion. Without knowing much about science—or Christianity, for that matter—some ordinary people feel that one stamps out the other—or, at least, that they are in serious conflict. On the other hand, a whole string of famous intellectuals (e.g. HG Wells, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, Max Planck, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould) have, according to New Atheist Sam Harris, “declared the war between reason and faith to be long over”.¹ But Harris is not happy with these intellectuals. He is even less happy with the US National Academy of Sciences, suggesting that science and Christianity should get along, because they are answering different kinds of questions about the world.² For Sam, this is not good enough; he wants the conflict to continue because, in his mind, science has already won.

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Once I got to church on time, but God arrived 20 minutes late. On the other hand, occasionally I've been to church and God didn't manage to turn up at all. At least, that's the impression you'd form if you judged by expectations.

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Last year I read this statement, tucked away in a footnote in a certain august magazine:

… Paul isn't talking [in 1 Corinthians 10:31] about just any old eating and drinking (as if there is such a thing as a godly and an ungodly way to drink a glass of milk!), but about the specific issue of sharing in fellowship meals with unbelievers.¹

The bit in brackets disturbed me (although, as I read on, I was reassured²) because I'm convinced that the Bible has a huge amount to say about seemingly inconsequential things like how to drink a glass of milk.

The Bible gives us a theology of insects, oceans, single cellular organisms, quarks, galaxies, the small spot on a nearby tree trunk, the unwanted hairs in my right eyebrow, and yes, the drinking of milk.

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If you are a Briefing subscriber, by now the June issue should have reached your mailbox. In these Saturday posts, we have been exploring the related topics of hell, judgement and the Sabbath. First we looked at why good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven. Then JI Packer explained why it is perilous to ignore Satan. Then Greg Clarke revealed who the antichrist is. Then we thought about the Sabbath in connection to the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. In this final Saturday post in this series, Joshua Ng unpacks the idea of that wonderful antithesis to hell: God's rest:

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This is the third in Nicole's series on ‘missional lifestyle’. Read parts 1 and 2.

I'm hoping in my next few posts to look at a few different areas of life (home, education, work, sport, etc.). I want to discuss the opportunities that each present for being involved in the lives of others—for their good and their salvation. I also want to examine some of the idolatries that we can be tempted to serve in each of these areas—idolatries that have the potential to destroy both us and our witness by luring our hearts away from Christ. I'm going to start with the most obvious one: our homes.

There are two big opportunities for mission that our homes open up for us: proximity and hospitality.

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This is the second post in Peter Bolt's series on the New Atheists. (Read the first.)

The New Atheists cannot be accused of being relativists. But their attacks on Christian truth claims still need some careful relativising.

The New Atheists are not talking to Christians, but about Christians—to recruit fellow secularists in the campaign to silence the Christian voice in the public domain. So Sam Harris, in his Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, New York, 2006), writes,

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Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. He also said, “Now go and sin no more”.

Keen Bible readers will know that Jesus said both things on the same occasion. (See John 8:3-11—especially verses 7 and 11 respectively.¹) My question is how do we hold and communicate both truths together to a society that denies the second statement's relevance and does not think we Christians believe the first?

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We have been taking a stroll around hell, judgement, the Sabbath and ideas related to these things in advance of the June issue of The Briefing. First we looked at why good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven. Then JI Packer explained why it is perilous to ignore Satan. Then Greg Clarke revealed who the antichrist is. This week, we think about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and how that affects our view of the Sabbath:

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I have to confess that for much of my Christian life, I'd not really stopped to consider the person of Mary and what she contributes to the church today. I knew about the major controversies of church history, and the significant differences between the Roman Catholic understanding and that of reformed Protestantism. But at a personal level, I'd never stopped to ask the question, “What does Mary mean to me?”

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This is the first in a series on the New Atheists.

There are many kinds of truth.

This opening statement may cause rejoicing in the hearts of the many relativists who now populate western society. However, the statement is not meant to encourage relativism, but proper thought—and, of course, those two things really don't go together.

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Guest blogger John Diacos explains what true biblical equality is.

The issue of gender roles within marriage is one that has become increasingly controversial during the feminist revolution of the last 30 years. It is interesting to read a book like New Testament Nuptial Imagery¹ from 1971, where the ‘traditional’ concepts like the submission of the wife and the headship of the husband are simply stated without revision or alternative suggestions.

Only 14 years later, a work like Bilezekian's Beyond Sex Roles² is typical of much recent scholarship that has proposed different interpretations of passages like Ephesians 5:21-33. In opposition to the traditional understanding, many commentators like Bilezekian portray their position as ‘egalitarian’ (defined as “asserting the equality of all people”³). Equality of all people, they assert, is a biblical principle demanded by passages like Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”.

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This is the third of this next lot of Saturday posts, focusing on hell, judgement and the Sabbath in advance of the June issue of The Briefing. First we looked at why good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven. Then JI Packer explained why it is perilous to ignore Satan. This week, Greg Clarke reveals who the antichrist is:

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This is the third post in a series Jean is doing on women in the Bible—the first two being about Eve.

Have you ever had a ‘girl crush’? You know, that admiring, platonic devotion women sometimes feel for other women. (The male version is, of course, the ‘boy crush’—most often expressed in adulation for preachers and thinkers like Don ‘The Don’ Carson and or John Piper.) Perhaps you adore Elisabeth Elliot, that beloved missionary. Perhaps you revere Susannah Wesley—she of the apron and the many children. Perhaps you idolize one of those regal, older women—someone you know who radiates calmness, wisdom and humility.

Sarah, wife of Abraham, seems like an ideal candidate for a girl crush. Her very name means ‘princess’. Her beauty was legendary (Gen 12:11). Many women (I'm one of them!) have been inspired by the Bible's call to imitate her persevering faith and trusting submission (Heb 11:8-12, 1 Pet 3:1-7).

So when my Bible study group came to Sarah's story, I think we were all expecting something pretty special. But we were unimpressed.

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This is the third and final part of a three-part series. Read parts 1 and 2.

As I said in my last post, in this final instalment, I am going to touch on some of the pitfalls or common objections to the use of creeds.

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The distresses of the human soul and ‘inner world’ can be many. Sometimes people speak of having to deal with their ‘inner demons’. Most of us can cope when this is simply a vivid metaphor. But what happens when we realize the struggler is speaking literally—that is, they think that their inner distress is due to real demons at work in their soul?

Okay, that's freaky—so medieval.

Unfortunately not.

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If you've just joined us, this next lot of Saturday posts will focus on hell, judgement and the Sabbath. Last week, we looked at why good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven. This week, in an excerpt from his book, God's Words, JI Packer explains why it is perilous to ignore Satan, that malevolent being who would like nothing more than to see us locked up in the pits of hell:

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This is the second part of a three-part series. Read part 1.

Recently I received the following comment after a sermon series on the Nicene Creed:

The Nicene Creed is like a favourite old horse that has died. No matter how you flog it—no matter how well you groom it—it needs to be buried and a new horse bought. It was good, but now it's dead!

Here is my reply: thank you for the colourful (but anonymous) expression of your opinion. However that's all it was: an expression of opinion without any reasons why the opinion was valid! I would have been helped by less certainty about your conclusion and more evidence for why you consider the Nicene Creed to be obsolete.

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It's the question that every Christian parent knows is coming sooner or later. I'm driving when six-year-old Thomas pipes up from the back seat. We're alone, which doesn't happen often in a family of six, so it's a precious time for us. Deep thoughts are clearly running through his head: “Mummy, why do some people believe in Jesus and not others?”

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As a change of pace from regular systematic expository preaching, and often to fit in with school holidays, I have developed a couple of sermons series entitled ‘Creedal conundrums’ that looks at phrases in the creeds that often puzzle people.

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Another month, another Briefing! While you are enjoying the fruits of the May issue (on infertility and the ethics of IVF), this next lot of Saturday posts will focus on the topic of the June Briefing: hell, judgement and the Sabbath.

This week, an anonymous Briefing author argues for why good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven:

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In a consumer-driven society, the preacher of the gospel can feel the pressure to aim always at the felt needs he/she guesses may exist in the potential hearer. Like all good angels of light, this too has its own attraction—and perhaps even some value. But as is usual with such blindingly beautiful apparitions, it too needs to be resisted, or at least received with great caution.

Once again (a deliberate attempt to tie in to previous posts), the pressure arises from the desperate search for a ‘point of contact’ (on the apparent assumption that this is not obvious, automatic, or already there since the gospel makes its own landing ground). It is often spoken of in terms of having to make the presentation of the gospel ‘relevant’ to the hearer.

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I was listening the other day to a satirical comedy show on British Radio. The presenter was making a point about human relationships. The bulk of his satirical piece consisted of a reading from Genesis 2:18-25, in full, from the King James Version of the Bible (“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him …”). He read it slowly and theatrically in a fake American accent. During the reading, the audience laughed uproariously. When the reading was finished, the skit was effectively over; the point was made. The show moved on to the next topic.

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My desk is currently cluttered with various currencies, my passport, boarding passes and luggage tags. Yes, it's time for an overseas trip—which, in my job, happens reasonably regularly.

I guess going to new places, crossing continents and meeting new people all sounds exciting—and, in some ways, it is. But the reality of international ‘business’ travel is that it is tiring, expensive and often lonely. And now I can add one more disadvantage to the list: it's dangerous! I'm not talking about terrorism or volcanic cloud-induced engine failure; the airline regulators and happy-go-lucky security people seem to have that under control. No, the greatest danger I think I face in my travel is much more spiritual: it's the danger of greed and discontent.

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This is the last Saturday post focusing on a past Briefing article on ethics, infertility and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in anticipation of the subject of the next issue of The Briefing. To recapitulate, first, we grappled with Michael Hill's question of how much (and whether) humans should meddle with God's creation. Then Kirsten Birkett showed us what happens when science and technology, ethics and morality, and human rights rub up against one another. Then we watched Andrew Cameron deconstruct some of the rhetoric surrounding the 2002 debate in Australia about when life begins. This week, Megan Best navigates the minefield of cloning, stem cell research and Australian government policy to figure out how Christians should think about these things:

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Grief, like joy, is full of surprises. Unlike joy, most of grief's surprises are unwelcome, and make the whole experience worse. One of these surprises, I have discovered, is that grief addles the mind with lies and tricks—for example,

• Am I a Christian?
• I will never pray again.
• What possible thing did I do to deserve this?
• God has stopped speaking to me through his word.
• Does God even exist?

They trip through the mind like so many bedraggled beggar children, creating confusion and clatter, and refusing to exit the premises.

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In my previous post, I started a short series on ‘missional lifestyle’, and set out a basic framework for discussing what that might look like. But before I jump into the details, I thought I ought to write a second ground-clearing post—this time focusing on the relationship between lifestyle and legalism.

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Michael Clark, Australian cricket team vice captain, recently confounded his critics by scoring a career-best 168 in a test match against New Zealand. He had every excuse not to. Before the match, he'd had a week that had included a broken engagement to a celebrity model, a dash across the ditch, time away from training, public accusations of lack of focus and commitment, and intense media scrutiny because of it all. But contrary to his detractors' doubts, it seems that Michael Clark has got mental toughness!

I'm told ‘mental toughness’ is something that frequently appears as a goal of military training. That's no surprise; we don't want those defending the nation to wither at the first sign of difficulty or opposition. There's an equivalent in the world of parenting and education that parenting gurus and school advertisements call ‘resilience’—the emotional ‘surefootedness’ to survive failure and disappointment that parents want instilled in their children to equip them for life.

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These Saturday posts are looking at past Briefing articles on ethics, infertility and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in anticipation of the subject of the next issue of The Briefing. First, we grappled with Michael Hill's question of how much (and whether) humans should meddle with God's creation. Then Kirsten Birkett showed us what happens when science and technology, ethics and morality, and human rights rub up against one another. This week, Andrew Cameron deconstructs some of the rhetoric surrounding the 2002 debate in Australia about when life begins:

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This post follows on from Jean's previous entry ‘Temptation and the garden’.

It's time for some free association. I'll give you a word. Close you eyes and tell me what springs to mind. Ready?

Motherhood.

What did you come up with? Kids? Caring? Apple pie? I'm pretty sure none of you came up with the word ‘salvation’! But in the Bible, motherhood and salvation go hand in hand.

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David McKay has raised two important issues about the idea of an impassible God that, I think, would naturally occur to many people confronted with the idea. And so we're going to bump one of Martin Shields's excellent concerns out in order to highlight another excellent issue raised by David:

One question I have is about the incarnation and exaltation of Jesus. I understand that one of the wonderful benefits of Jesus' incarnation and exaltation is that God became Man and that Jesus remains forever an exalted Man. He is God but he is truly human. One of the things I take from Hebrews is that we have a great high priest who is a perfect man who is interceding for us. It is nice to know that he had the experience of being a man like us. He suffered and was tempted like us, but he was triumphant over all this suffering and temptation. He never sinned.

But I would have thought that it is important to know that he still feels for us now as an exalted Man. Has he retreated from sharing truly in our experiences and become impassible again? The more I think about it, the more this doctrine makes God to be cold and unfeeling.

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On a church camp recently (not our own church, but another one), I had the chance to take part in a discussion with a group of women about what a ‘missional lifestyle’ might look like for us in our various life situations. (My husband Dave was involved in a parallel discussion with the men.)

Stimulated by that discussion and a few of the loose ends left over at the end of it, I thought I might turn my thoughts into a short series of blog posts on the subject. I'll do my best to write in a way that isn't fixated on the things that are particular to my own situation. Instead, as far as possible, I'll try and think the issues through in a way that opens up the conversation to other people in different life circumstances. But if the examples along the way tend to be a bit ‘mums-y’ at times, I hope you'll understand and forgive!!

The basic framework for the conversation at the camp went like this:

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If you've just joined us, this next lot of Saturday posts will focus on the thorny landscape of ethics, infertility and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in keeping with the subject of the next issue of The Briefing. Last week, Michael Hill worked through the question of how much (and whether) humans should meddle with God's creation. This week, Kirsten Birkett looks at what happens when science and technology, ethics and morality, and human rights rub up against one another:

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(This post is the second responding to feedback on Mark's series on impassibility. Read the first.)

Martin Shields's second point is, in my view, the most important of all. He argues that God is no Humpty Dumpty from Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, Macmillan, London, 1871, chapter 6.)

Most of us agree with Alice that large anthropomorphic eggs sitting on walls don't get to use words with completely different meanings. Words mean what they mean. And that's Martin Shields's second great concern:

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(Read Peter Bolt's previous posts in this series.)

What could be stranger than stranger evangelism?

‘Stranger evangelism’ is a misnomer. Forget the comparative; we should use the superlative instead, for isn't it the strangest evangelism?

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[Update: Corrected the spelling of Martin Shields's name.]

Martin Shields offered a series of very thoughtful concerns in response to the last post in my series on impassibility. In the process, he raised a bunch of key issues to do with how we read the Bible. His concerns are profoundly important questions that affect far more than the issue of impassibility. So I'm going to offer in these four posts what I think is at stake in Martin Shields's concerns and why I disagree with him in the hope that the debate might stimulate all of us forward as we live in the knowledge of God.

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As I mentioned in last week's Saturday post, we will now be turning our attention to the topic of the next issue of The Briefing, which is on ethics, infertility and in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Obviously this is not the first time The Briefing has tackled science and ethics before. Over the next four weeks, we will look at some of the classics from our archives on this subject.

This week, Michael Hill wrestles with the question of how much human beings should fiddle with God's creation:

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(Read Peter Bolt's last post in this series.)

In some missiological circles, if ‘evangelism’ is a ‘boo word’, then ‘interfaith dialogue’ is a ‘hooray word’. Evangelism is so one-way, so high-and-mighty, so two centuries ago. Interfaith dialogue doesn't assume one ‘faith’ is better or more enlightened than another; nor does it mean that one is telling the other, for it is an attempt at a two-way mutual sharing, and its aim of ‘mutual understanding’ sounds so much better than the ‘conversion’ of another.

I guess Elijah's encounter on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal wouldn't be a ‘prooftext’ for such dialogues, nor would Jesus' uncomfortable words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).

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Is it possible to be focused too on the cross of Christ?

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In the final part of this three-part series, Mark Baddeley shows how God's impassibility affects his demands on us. (Read parts 1 and 2.)

We have been turning our attention to the question of whether God is impassible—that is, that God is in no way affected by the creatures he has made, and cannot die or suffer. Last time around, we explored how impassibility was a key element in the early Christian understanding of creation—that God made everything from nothing, and did so as a free choice out of pure goodness. This time around, we turn our attention to God's law.

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With a new month comes a new Briefing. But this being Easter weekend, instead of turning to the subject of our next issue, I thought it would be good to stop and reflect on why Jesus' resurrection makes a difference to our lives.

Here is Phillip Jensen and Greg Clarke on what the resurrection achieved:

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In part 2 of this three-part series, Mark Baddeley explains why the doctrine of God's impassibility benefits us. (Read part 1.)

We have been looking at the question of whether God is impassible—whether God is ever the object of other people's actions or only ever the subject of his own—whether he moves others but is never moved by them. As I suggested last time, this often raises the question for people of whether God has emotions—whether God is moved by what happens to us, good or bad. As it seems to us fairly obvious that God has to have emotions to be able to love, the notion that God is impassible is a prime contender for the ‘Most Unbiblical Abstract Philosophizing Award’. We just know that emotions are everything.

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I was driving the kids home from school when I saw something you don't expect on an arterial road heading into a major city. It was a horse-drawn carriage, taking up the left-hand lane, slowing the traffic to a crawl.

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I have never really been 100 per cent behind the ‘point of contact’ view of evangelism. Leaving aside the pretty stark dichotomies in the Scriptures (e.g. “what fellowship has light with darkness?”—2 Cor 6:14b), which appear to suggest that there is absolutely no common ground between truth and error, it just seems to be filled with all kinds of problems.

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In part 1 of a three-part series, Mark Baddeley explores our problem with talking about God's impassibility.

Spock vs. Data

Star Trek, in all its reincarnations, is a great show. It is so pretentious in its aspirations to say something meaningful and so inane in its working assumptions, that it works as an almost perfect mirror of the values and concerns of the society that existed when it was televised. The highly evolved and civilized Federation of the future almost always reflects the concerns of the slightly left-of-centre-leaning portion of North American society who were the target of the show's producers. The ‘Federation’ is simply ‘the Democratic Party writ large’. And so the show acts like a great expression of the cultural intuitions of the societies to which we belong and live and minister in.

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If you've just joined us, in these Saturday posts we've been looking at classics from The Briefing archive on the Holy Spirit. First we learned about the signs and wonders ministry of John Wimber. Then we looked at the issue of Christian experience and what the Holy Spirit has to do with it. Then we examined the foundations for how we should think about Christian experience. This week, we broaden our understanding of the Holy Spirit from yet another angle: the glory of God and the glory he shares with us. This is an excerpt from part 2 of Rob Smith's “story of the glory of God”:

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Recently after a sermon on 2 Timothy, we received the follow comment on the topic of election. My answer follows.

Question: You said that God calls all people everywhere to repent and follow him. But we are also taught that only the elect are able to turn back to God. So how, then, are the non-elect culpable for their actions when they are given no opportunity to turn back?

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Here in Mexico, many middle-class people spend a significant amount of time and money reducing suffering and the potential for suffering. I suspect Mexicans are not alone in their engagement of this pursuit. (I'm using ‘suffering’ in a very broad sense here—anything from ‘annoyance’ to ‘effort’ to ‘persecution’.) For example, here in Mexico, you can perform many tasks in ‘drive-thru’ mode to reduce the ‘suffering’ of having to get out of your car and walk. Buying lunch, going to the ATM, buying the paper, buying new windscreen wipers (!) and taking your kids to school are all activities it is possible to undertake in a suffering-free manner.

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The National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES), Richard Chin, has begun preaching through 2 Timothy at our church. When he covered chapter 2, we received a couple of questions. I ended up answering them as the pastor here.

Question: 2 Timothy 2:13-14 says, “if we are faithless, he [Christ] remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself”. Can you explain to whom is God faithful?

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According to TS Eliot, you know you're old when you wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled.¹ But in Christian circles, it seems, you know you're old when you start thinking older people haven't passed their use-by date. It would appear that I'm old, and perhaps that's why I'm noticing just how much ageism has snuck into our ministry mindset and fellowships.

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All our temptations are garden temptations.

I don't usually talk much about gardening when I lead Bible studies, but recently during our study on Genesis 3, I asked, “What does the Garden of Eden show us about God?”

The answer? God is abundantly generous. He didn't give Adam and Eve a dry loaf and a cup of water; he gave them a beautiful garden brimming with varied, wonderful fruitful plants to eat and enjoy (Gen 2:9).

And what was God's word to the people he'd made? “Eat! Eat freely from every tree in the garden!”¹ There was only one tree they weren't to eat from, and that was “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:16-17). In other words, the only thing they weren't to do was to rip God's authority away from him, and decide good and evil for themselves.

But that's not the way Eve saw it.

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In this fifth and final instalment of his five-part series, Lionel Windsor reveals what the solution to Psalm 8 has done about the problem of death. (Read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.)

We've been looking at Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2, and have discovered that Jesus provides the solution to the puzzle of Psalm 8.

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If you've just joined us, in these Saturday posts we've been looking at classics from The Briefing archive on the Holy Spirit. First we learned about the signs and wonders ministry of John Wimber. Last week, we looked at the issue of Christian experience and what the Holy Spirit has to do with it. This week, John Woodhouse lays the foundations for how we should think about Christian experience:

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In the fourth instalment of a five-part series, Lionel Windsor uncovers the answer to the riddle. (Read parts 1, 2 and 3.)

We've been looking at Psalm 8, and we've seen the puzzle it presents us with. On the one hand, we are nothing compared to the majestic God who created the universe. On the other hand, God tells us that we are important—that we are created for a purpose in this world.

You know that you and your actions matter, don't you? You know that what you do or say, how you treat the world and how you treat other people actually matters, don't you? You know that some things are right and that some things are wrong, don't you? You know that you will face death one day, like everyone else, and that there's something scary and horrible about that. What are you going to do about it?

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We at Matthias Media have recently made available a free and downloadable discussion guide for Col Marshall and Tony Payne's The Trellis and the Vine. Download it from our Australian or North American store.

Released in only December last year, The Trellis and the Vine is currently undergoing its fourth printing, which will bring the total number of copies printed to over 55,000. This makes it the most successful book we've published in our 22-year history.

But it's not just the quantity of sales that's exciting; what really excites us is what people are saying to us about the content. The Trellis and the Vine calls for a radical re-think of the priorities of church ministry. So far, most of those buying the book are pastors, and the reaction has been extremely good. They see the biblical truth of what's being said, and they are being challenged to rethink what they're doing. In particular, Col Marshall and Tony Payne call upon them to focus on people more than on programs and structures. Providing that kind of help and challenge to so many people—well, that's why we do what we do here at Matthias Media.

We hope that the release of this discussion guide will facilitate church members talking together about the issues the book raises and the changes they might need to make in their fellowship and in their own lives.

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In the third instalment of a five-part series, Lionel Windsor discovers we humans are significant in the universe after all. (Read parts 1 and 2.)

We've been looking at Psalm 8 and have discovered that stargazing should make us wonder why God the creator should have anything to do with us.

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I teach Sunday School for children regularly, but I don't always have the time and energy to write my own lessons. So last year I found myself in the market for Sunday School material.

Thanks to a friend trawling through the shelves at a Christian bookshop, what I discovered was kids@church, put out by Youthworks in conjunction with CEP. (In Britain, it's published as Click by The Good Book Company). I suspect that lots of churches in Sydney are familiar with this material, but many other churches aren't.

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I mentioned in my last Saturday post that for the next little while, we would be looking at articles from The Briefing archive on the Holy Spirit as a precursor to our April issue on the topic.

Today we delve into the area of experience and the Holy Spirit. John Woodhouse in Briefing #85 attempts to cut through the confusion:

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In the second instalment of a five-part series, Lionel Windsor contemplates the extent of our significance in the universe. (Read Part 1.)

We've been looking at Psalm 8, and we've discovered that stargazing helps us to see how insignificant we really are.

Just think about the size of space for a moment. Imagine you could get into the fastest jet on earth (last time I checked, this was the SR-71 Blackbird). Its official speed record is almost 2,500 miles per hour. Now imagine you could speed it up 100 times to 250,000 miles per hour. Then imagine that you could take it on a trip to space. It would take you an hour to get to the moon—that's pretty reasonable! It would take you eight days to get to Mars, the closest planet to Earth. It would take you four months to get to the planet Saturn (remember, we're travelling 100 times faster than the fastest jet ever built). It would take you a year and a half to get to the planet Pluto at the edge of our solar system. To get to the closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, it would take you 12,000 years. To get to the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, it would take you 80 million years. To the next closest galaxy, Andromeda, it would take you seven billion years. To get to the edge of the visible universe, it would take you 40 million million years. And they think that the size of the non-visible universe is vastly huger than this: that would take you a million million million million, etc. years.

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Revisionist history is probably as common as it is unethical. There are lessons to learn from the past, but if the past is distorted for the sake of present-day lessons, then it is no longer serving honest inquiry, but has become propaganda.

The destruction of the World Trade Centre by Muslim terrorists has spawned in the West a new fear of Islam, as well as a new desire to understand Islam. At the same time (and rather strangely and illogically), it has spawned new attacks upon Christianity. For example, the event in New York motivated Christopher Hitchens, one of the ‘new atheists’, to speak against religion as a damaging force in the world. So what began with some Muslim extremists was generalized to all religion, and then (it seems) particularized by a renewed and increased attack upon Christianity. Go figure.

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In the first instalment of a five-part series, Lionel Windsor ponders what astronomy has to teach us.

I'm a fan of space. I don't actually know much about the details of astronomy or cosmology or astrophysics; I just think that the space is really cool.

If there are any real scientists reading this, I want to say thanks. I know that most of your work involves boring and tedious searching, collating and number crunching. Thanks for doing all that stuff so that I can see those fantastic pictures of nebulas on the internet and wonder at it all.

For example, I'm a fan of millisecond pulsars. A gigantic star, millions of light years away, explodes in a huge supernova. It creates a fireball ten million billion billion times bigger than Hiroshima. In its ashes, it leaves behind a neutron star made of dense atomic nuclei, squashed together at a density 10 trillion times greater than steel. A teaspoon full of neutron star weighs about the same as Sydney Harbour. Sometimes this neutron star will steal stuff from a nearby star and start spinning. Some neutron stars spin hundreds of times a second—a whole star rotating as fast as an idling car engine. Many of these super-dense, revving stars send out pulses of electromagnetic radiation, milliseconds apart. And we might be able to use these millisecond pulsars as standard cosmological clocks to help us detect gravitational waves, explore space-time bending, and understand more about the tiniest particles in the universe.

But apart from the wow factor, what's the point of learning about space?

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As our beloved convenor Paul Grimmond has now left us, I shall be taking over the Saturday posts, where, in keeping with our usual practice, we present some Briefing ‘blasts from the past’. Because one of my other hats is Briefing staff editor and because we are currently working on our April issue, which is on the Holy Spirit, I thought it fitting that we look over what else The Briefing has had to say about the topic.

Our lead feature article in the April 2010 issue is a very lengthy but important essay by John Woodhouse, Principal of Moore College, on Cessationism and Continuationism. Broadly speaking, Cessationism is the view that the miraculous parts of the New Testament ceased with the New Testament era, while Continuationism is the view that those miraculous parts continued beyond the New Testament era.

John Wimber and Jack Deere are just two examples of those who subscribe to a continuationist viewpoint. So from Briefing #45, I present to you part of the discussion that took place between John Woodhouse, David Cook and Phillip Jensen, and John Wimber and his colleagues back in 1990—a discussion that illustrates John Wimber's position on healing and miracles:

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There are very few Mexicans competing in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Well, that is what I assume from the complete lack of coverage here. At least we are being spared the scandals, tears and fashion disasters that usually accompany such an event!

So with no curling to enjoy when I need a brain break, my remote has led me to watch a bit of basketball. Here in Mexico, we get both kinds of basketball: NBA (professional, LA Lakers, Boston Celtics, absurd amounts of money, etc.) and college (university, 18-21-year-olds—many of whom will in a few years be making absurd amounts of money). Now I'm the sort of guy who will watch just about any kind of sport. I've also played a bit of basketball in my time, so it's been interesting to me to observe the difference between NBA and college. Strangely, reflecting on that has helped me understand 1 Corinthians 3.

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Anthony Caruana shows why Australian Christians should be concerned about Stephen Conroy's internet filter.

It is imperative that Australian Christians make themselves aware of legislative changes being proposed by the government. Under the guise of measures to “improve safety of the internet for families”, Senator Stephen Conroy recently announced that mandatory filtering of content that has been refused classification, or rated ‘RC’, will be enforced through legislation.

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Across the 12th and 13th centuries, the noblemen of Europe conducted a series of ‘Crusades’ in the Holy Land. Over six or seven centuries, this period history was largely neglected, but then the 20th century saw a resurgence of (negative) interest in these Crusades, which generated a number of myths that took over popular opinion.

I don't know how many times over the years I have found myself flummoxed in evangelistic conversations when the question is thrown at me, “What about the Crusades?”

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In the circles I move in, the issue of preaching is, perhaps, top of the list of things churches need to change in order to lift their game. The feeling is that there is a need for more passion, more authenticity, more engagement, and more confidence that God is here, that he speaks, and that his word is powerful to move and change people—whole people, that is, not just their expertise in how to read the Bible.

Now, there may be some truth in these observations. But that's not my concern here. I want to turn the spotlight around 180 degrees. My concern, as someone who spends my time in the pews, not the pulpit, is that what goes on in our pews is also in need of more passion, more authenticity, more engagement and more confidence that God is here with us as we meet on Sundays.

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It's probably a bit grandiose to call it the end of an era since, in this case, the era only lasted for about 12 months, but the legendary days of Paul Grimmond's ‘convenorship’ of The Sola Panel have drawn to a close.

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Our final WordWatch in this series is about that rather ugly word in the field of relationships: ‘partner’.

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American evangelical giant Carl Henry was also in favour of saying nuttin'.

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I was thinking of writing a post on global warming and climate change, but there's an insistent voice in my head that keeps saying, “No, don't do it! Tell 'em nuttin'!”

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What I'm about to say about evangelism is so obvious, so basic, so humdrum and down-to-earth that I almost feel like not saying it. It feels like a waste of a blog post. But even though it's so obvious, it's something that I have only just realized after years and years. And I suspect (and in fact, I know) that lots of other people are in the same boat.

I'll assume that you, like me, believe that people need to saved from hell into eternal life; that God is in the business of saving people by bringing them the gospel of Jesus Christ; that this gospel is usually spoken by Christians in a context of relationship; and that it is quite likely that there are people in your neighbourhood (work, school, street, etc.) with whom you potentially could share, or are even now sharing, this gospel. I hope that you are praying for some of these people too.

Okay, so what stops us from sharing the gospel with them?

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‘Mission’ is one of those words that is common in our Christian vocabulary, but that can have a wide and often confusing variety of meanings. Narrowing the definition slightly to the activities associated with ‘going out’, rather than ‘an aim or objective’, we still have a wide usage. We go on beach mission, our church is involved in mission, we are a member of a mission society, and we pray for, send, support and even go as missionaries. But what does ‘mission’ mean in these contexts? Is it time to introduce a new word so that we can be more accurate about what these activities might and might not be and so that our support and prayers can be better informed and focussed?

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Kel Richards is a fount of wisdom and rare information about words. Today he explores the history of the word ‘environmentalism’ and challenges us to swim against the tide.

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Do you know for sure that you are going to be with God in Heaven? If God were to ask you, “Why should I let you into My Heaven?” what would you say?

Have you ever used these questions (or a variation on them) to talk about the impact of the gospel of Jesus Christ with friends or strangers? They are the introductory questions in the well-known gospel explanation associated with Evangelism Explosion (EE). They've proved themselves to be a very popular way to start a serious discussion about our relationship with God. We assume that people in our world have given at least some thought to their own death and eternal destiny. These questions help us to show how the gospel, with its strong emphasis on assurance of future salvation through Jesus (e.g. 1 Thess 1:10, Heb 9:27-28, 1 Pet 1:3-5), provides a clear answer to important issues.

But, perhaps, not any more: XEE, the next generation version of Evangelism Explosion, starts with quite a different set of questions:

On a Scale of 1 to 10, how fulfilling would you say your life is?

What makes it an X? Would it change in either direction if God were in your life?

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I'm sorry, Sandy, at the end of a fairly exhausting year, during which God has continued to show his goodness and kindness in all sorts of ways, I lack the will and strength to fill in your survey about books I've read this year. Although may I take this moment to recommend the most brilliant—and, in fact, the only—book ever released by Matthias Media under the title Encouragement, as well as the chortle-worthy, friendly but occasionally disappointing Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by Michael Palin.

So, sorry not to have been more detailed in responding to your survey, Sandy, but let me at least mention one book and one blog that Sola Panel readers could do worse than check out.

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I was reading Titus 3 the other day. It was one of those mornings when you don't expect much from your Bible reading and you think, “Oh, yes, one of those concluding chapters in Paul's letters where he rambles on about a message for such-and-such and a gift for so-and-so”.

I dutifully prayed for God to open my eyes to see wonderful things in his word (Ps 119:18), and despite my sinfully low expectations, he did! It's astonishing, always, although it shouldn't be by now.

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What is the most polite way to refer to an old person? Have you noticed how the words we collectively use to refer to old people in the media and in private conversation keep changing? It's a strange process. We start using a word or phrase, for example, ‘old man’, ‘old woman’. After a while, we decide that this phrase is really a little derogatory, and so we change to another, more neutral phrase, such as ‘senior citizen’. But after a while, ‘senior citizen’ sounds condescending and slightly offensive. So we try another, more neutral, word—like ‘elderly’. But the same thing happens: after we use the word ‘elderly’ for a while, it starts to sound a bit insulting. So we try ‘aged’. Then ‘ageing’. And so on. The reason this keeps happening is that our underlying concept of ageing itself is negative. It doesn't matter what word we choose to express it; that word will start to take on the negative connotations that we associate with the underlying concept.

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What major anniversaries does the evangelical world celebrate in 2010?

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Okay, so I said that Sola Panel would be back online sometime in mid-January and here we are! (Come on. If 1st January is the beginning of January and the 31st is the end, then I reckon we're still somewhere in mid-January. At least, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.)

We're kicking off with a Kel Richards WordWatch on a less-than-commonly used word today: ‘cumber’ (and no, you don't have it on sandwiches).

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