Nice isn’t good; mean isn’t bad. There. I said it. You’ve long suspected my heresy. Now you have proof in black and white. But it’s true. Nice isn’t good and our unshakeable conviction that it is, is making us bad. Let me explain what I mean. Imagine you’re walking down […]
If you’re involved in any sort of Christian ministry, you’ve probably got a steady stream of “projects” coming across your desk. Births, deaths, engagements, marriages, family problems, relationship issues, etc. And if you’ve been at it for any length of time, you’ve probably developed an approach to each of these […]
Funerals are awkward things. At a time when people are most attuned to the hard realities of truth, we often sigh as speaker after speaker tries desperately to make a halo fit around the horns of the dearly deceased. I’ve often thought, therefore, what it would be like if someone […]
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 […]
We all know intuitively that there is a line between giving your child a smack and physically abusing him. While we may draw our lines in slightly different places, all decent people understand that there is a line and crossing it is evil. Church discipline is similar, but when it […]
Is our planet warming? If so, is global warming man-made? What should we do to protect the environment? These are questions Australians are asking every day. As followers of Jesus Christ, what should our attitude toward environmental matters be? If we are going to answer the questions of our day, […]
Teaching, cleaning, painting, singing… life is busy in the body of Christ. But what about when it isn’t? What about when you can’t teach and you can’t clean? You’re too weary to paint and you’re too empty to sing? I think we generally find it easy enough to minister in […]
Right. So you finally find the perfect church. The pastor, the preaching, the music, the fellowship… everything. It’s perfect. And it’s a good thing because after all these years, you were beginning to think it didn’t exist. But it does of course. You have proof. You’ve just found it. Thus […]
When a dictator rules, one of three things will happen to the courageous: The courageous will stand up to the dictator and be mowed down. The courageous will stand up to the dictator and escape/survive and will be hated and feared by the dictator. The courageous will do nothing and […]
It’s a sad indictment on Christianity that we have come to be known as anti-intellectuals. But you can hardly blame people for getting this impression considering some of what they see us do. But that is not what this post is about. This post is about the dangers of non […]
