So I’ve spent the week at Oxygen 2014 sitting under, and publicly engaging, the preaching of men like Don Carson, Francis Chan, John Lennox, Paul Tripp, and Bryan Chapell. But what about separation? What about contending for the faith? Doesn’t the fact that some of these men hold to […]
KCC’s Oxygen is becoming, it seems to me, Australia’s premiere evangelical event. This week 1,500+ Christian leaders have gathered in Sydney to rally around the gospel of Jesus Christ. The dominant majority of the preaching and teaching has been contentful, theologically sound, gospel-saturated, and passionately felt. If you’re looking for […]
Here are some observations from my time here at Oxygen 2014 so far. Concerns First, there is a danger that, in trying to bring people together from a broad spectrum of Christian circles, we can so dilute the content of our combined fellowship as to make it tepid. For […]
I’m in Sydney at the Australian Technology Park today and I’m excited to be covering Oxygen 2014 live from today until Thursday (It’s not too late to register by the way). To follow our live twitter stream, follow our twitter account @teaminfocus! We’ll be tweeting throughout the day there. My […]
My alma mater and the flagship educational institution of American Fundamentalism, Bob Jones University, has just announced the appointment of Steve Pettit as the fifth president of BJU. I received this news with gladness both for BJU and for Steve Pettit and I feel a sense of sobriety as I […]
My friend, Good change is not inevitable. It seemed for years that the battle against slavery in the British Empire would be lost. Those who fought to abolish the evil of slavery—men like John Newton, William Pitt, and William Wilberforce—felt at times a sense of the impossibility of the task. […]
Data from the 2011 Australian national census has been released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. There are many who may find the data on religious affiliation useful. In this series, I’ll be attempting to outline the basic data as well as doing some minor analysis and drawing some conclusions. […]
It would be imprudent of me to conclude this series without making some important clarifications to what I have said up to now. There are, unfortunately, a number of teachings about forgiveness in the modern church which do grievous harm. Several come to mind that I address here. Releasing vs. […]
Healing. Sweetness. Joy. Edification. Humility. If you try to make this stuff happen, you will fail. The stuff I talk about here is the fruit. The root is the forgiveness, compassion, benevolence, and prayer we looked at in part one. Part one is the means. Part two is the ends. […]
It might be as simple as an insulting comment or as complex as childhood sexual abuse, but whatever we’re dealing with, one thing is clear: We all get hurt at times. Sometimes we can overlook and move on. The damage is minimal. But when the hurt is too deep for […]
