Archives: review

No ordinary plan

Resource Talk

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Things don’t always go to plan. You try to do your Christmas shopping in October, but somehow you’re still looking for gifts on the 23rd of December. You mean to ask that couple from church around for dinner, but the weeks go by and the invitation slips your mind every Sunday. This is the year you’re going to exercise more and eat better… how did another kilogram sneak on to the scales? (more…)

Exploding Fenella Souter’s Myths of Christmas

Review, Thought

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Last Saturday, the ‘Good Weekend’ magazine published by the Sydney Morning Herald (and the Melbourne Age?), ran an article by Fenella Souter entitled “Truth, Lies and Santa Claus: Exploding the Myths of Christmas” (not available online). (more…)

Gunning for God

Review

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Unless you’ve been hiding in a cocoon for the past ten years, you can’t have failed to notice the New Atheists and their public challenge to religion and Christianity in particular. Men like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris (to name perhaps the three most famous examples) have proclaimed from whatever atheistic minaret they could find their call that the very idea of God is a delusion, that the God of the Bible is not great, and that ‘faith’ should be at an end. (more…)

Escaping pornography

Review

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When my grandfather was a boy, porn was something that was, for most people, hard to come by. It was the postcard passed around, the naughty story shared. While there was a sex industry—prostitutes, strip clubs, and the like—for most people this was the dark side of society, a place they never visited, rarely talked about. It was certainly not mainstream. (more…)

Bring on the revolution

Resource Talk

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Course of Your Life workbookOne of the more exciting and unexpected outcomes of the success of The Trellis and the Vine has been a kind of extended book tour that Col Marshall and I have been doing around the place for the last 18 months—running ‘Trellis and Vine’ workshops, talking to people about the ideas, interacting. (more…)

What are we reading in Oz?

Life, Review

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It seems the new Briefing is getting into the analysis business, so I thought I’d have a go in regards to Christian literature in Australia.

But before you read on…

  • What do you think would be the most popular genres?
  • Whom do you think would be the most popular authors?
  • How influential do you think reformed theology might be on the general Christian book scene? (Guess a percentage of reformed literature among the most popular titles.)

    • (more…)

Learning God is there

Resource Talk

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The Birthday Party coverI have a nephew about to turn two, and a week ago I went to visit for the first time in a few months. The last time I’d seen him, the only word I was certain he understood was ‘no’ (even if understanding didn’t always result in the desired outcome). This time I stepped off the train to find him saying ‘tain’ and ‘toot-toot!’, all the while looking at me with admiration for having actually ridden on the object of his affections. When he beamed at me and chirped “Hi!”, I was as smitten as when he was first born. (more…)

Making the most of his time

Resource Talk

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Do you ever wonder what you’ll be like at 80?

I sometimes have a vision of myself as a kindly old chap with white hair that people think of as that Nice Old Mr Payne. What a gent!

Or sometimes I dream of being something more in the line of an elder statesman; still active, still vigorous, still writing, like a cross between Gandalf and JI Packer. (more…)

David Helm on One to One Bible reading

Video

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Consistent with the Bible

Resource Talk

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Consistency has never been one of my strong points. “It is the bugbear of small minds”, I breezily say as I am caught out doing the very thing for which I have berated the kids not five minutes previously (take your pick from: eating high-spill-potential food in the good room, flicking between channels constantly on the TV, or leaving every light on in the house). (more…)