Churches of reconciliation: the diverse church as good news for the world

Here’s the text version of the paper; the previous post offered a pdf version.
WA TEAR Conference 19 September 2009
As TEAR people, you already know that the good news is more than personal salvation after you die. You know that justice is an essential part of the kingdom of God. But have you ever heard the [...]

Churches of Reconciliation: the Diverse Church as Good News for the World

Here’s the paper I gave at the TEAR conference yesterday:
Churches of reconciliation
I shall tell you more about it later in the week, but I told people it would be up here, so I thought I’d better make good on that.

Resurrection and Renewal: Bigger and Better Than Going to Heaven When You Die

Here’s the text of that sermon I gave at  Network Vineyard Church on 12 July 2009.
1. Introduction

I want to talk about an area of faith where my whole way of thinking was turned upside down. And that’s about heaven. I’m anticipating three possible reactions – boredom, disagreement and excitement. I hope the excited group of [...]

Resurrection and Renewal

You can now hear the sermon I gave on Sunday on the Network Vineyard website.  It’s about resurrection of our bodies and life on a renewed earth as the substance of our future hope, rather than eternity in a disembodied heaven. I took the dangerous step of opening the floor for questions at the [...]

Writing novels for the kingdom

Last night I presented a paper to the Newbigin Group on “Writing novels for the kingdom.” Below is the introduction; if you like the sound of it, you can download the PDF file.
It might be much more appropriate to go off and write a novel (and not a ‘Christian’ novel where half the characters [...]

Discovering the Sabbath

Here’s the text of the sermon I gave yesterday, also posted on the Network Vineyard blog. You can also listen to it here.

Today I want to talk about discovering the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the weekly day of celebration and rest God commands his people to take in the ten commandments. Of course, for [...]

Success in the Kingdom of God: a sermon

Agape Chinese Baptist Church 27 April 2008
Reading: Luke 12:13-21

 The world brainwashes us with a particular version of success. According to the world, we are successful when we have a lot of money. We are successful when people admire us and envy us. The world tells us that we need lots of stuff to be successful [...]

The agape feast

The text of the sermon I preached today at Agape Chinese Baptist Church 
I think ‘Agape’ is a wonderful name for a church. In using it, you are using a word which sums up what church should be all about. Agape is the sort of love God has for us and the sort of love we should [...]

Growing with the Bible in the New Year

A sermon I gave yesterday at Agape Chinese Baptist Church. 
New Year’s resolutions
A New Year feels like a fresh start. We have a whole year ahead of us, not yet spoilt by mistakes or our old ways of doing things. Of course, Chinese New Year isn’t until February 7th, so you have a little longer to make up New [...]

Priscilla and Aquila : a sermon

1. Serving God as a couple
I work in the State Library. One of the things we do is send out books to all the public libraries in Western Australia. We send them to Perth libraries like Bullcreek and Willeton. But we also send them to tiny libraries in Aboriginal communities where there might only be [...]