It’s been a busy time packing and cleaning up before moving on to the next exciting adventure that the Lord has waiting for us. Many of you will know from experience what it’s like the day before the removalist comes and takes all your stuff away. You have to make important decisions about what to keep and what to bin; what to take to the Lifeline Op-shop and what leave for the next owners. At a little after 8pm that evening the phone rang to say that Jandre had died. That wasn’t totally unexpected. Usually admission to a Hospice is a...

Someone once remarked that the doctrine of original sin doesn’t need any proof. The flawed nature of humanity is just too painfully obvious. And yet, strangely, there is this very common misconception that human beings are inherently good. If we just make sure that we have the right environment in which to live and if only we remove the negative stresses from our surroundings all will turn out okay. A hundred years ago there was much optimism about humankind. It seemed unshakeably sure that we could create our own Utopia here on earth. We wish! Two World Wars later we’re not...

Lately we’ve been reminding our church members that the church’s banking details have changed and that they can find the new BSB and Account Number in their church bulletin. For most of our lives we didn’t know (and probably didn’t care) what the church’s bank details were. Suddenly it has become important. The reason is that many of us now support our church financially by transferring money from our own account to that of the church via EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) – for which we (obviously!) need the church’s bank details. Does it matter that we now use EFT? Not really....

Early in my ministry I got talking to an elderly colleague who had only recently retired. I had noticed already as a teenager that whenever this man preached in our church he would not look at the people in his congregation. His eyes invariably focused on some spot high up on the back wall of the auditorium. When I found myself in the same State and sitting next to him at a State-wide Ministers’ gathering I thought it was appropriate to put the question: “I always thought that preachers and speakers considered eye-contact with their listeners important. But I noticed already...

The Coalition’s Senator Eric Abetz recently took a well-deserved swipe at the media. He claimed that the media is not truly representative of the Australian population but has a left wing bias – particularly against things Christian. “If you have a Christian, conservative point of view to offer, the media will have this negative-sentiment override which will simply be critical of any views that you may seek to express and that has, regrettably, been the case now for many years in the media gallery.” Recently a bold headline in The Australian (17/10) proclaimed, “State schools telling kids to ‘thank God for...

What a sad week it has been for our South African friends! Their largest church, the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK) officially approved same-sex marriages (SSM). At the same time their synod also opened the way for their ministers and other office-bearers to live as practicing homosexuals and to even marry their same-sex partners. Previously homosexual office-bearers in that church were permitted to serve on the condition that they lived celibate lives. The moderator of their synod, Nelis Janse van Rensburg applauded the decision by saying, “...with this decision we actually are at a point where there can be no doubt that...

Some time ago the Muslims in our community bought a church building that had been left unused after the church merged with another congregation. The Muslims turned the building into a mosque. Within a short time two unsuccessful attempts were made to burn the building to the ground. There is obviously a faction in our town that does not tolerate a mosque in our midst. The “Weekend Australian Magazine” (26/9/15) contained an article on what is happening in the city of Bendigo in Victoria. Their city Council was faced with an application for the building of a mosque in the city....

On one occasion at a Minister’s Association meeting an Anglican colleague took me aside while we were enjoying a cuppa before the meeting proper began. He asked whether he could “pick my brain”. A strange expression! Were brains up for grabs and he wanted to choose mine? Or was my brain that hard to crack that he needed a pick? We really ought to come up with a different expression for those moments when we want to benefit from someone else’s wisdom. But I digress. He proceeded to spell out some complex church matter that was troubling him and that he...

One of our regional State High Schools is introducing a new way of teaching their students, using a tool that is becoming increasingly popular around the world. It is called Classcraft and is managed by an on-line company by that name: classcraft.com. Their stated objective is that “Classcraft helps teachers manage, motivate and engage their students by transforming their classroom into a role-playing game.” The thinking behind this latest phenomenon is some statistical data. In the USA 58% of Americans play video games (45% are women) and 58% of parents play video games with their children in order to socialise with...

Just two weeks after my sixteenth birthday the late J. F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the US of A. I remember well his inauguration speech – well, at least one line of it, which became famous and has often since been repeated and quoted: "My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." That’s a line that more Aussies should take to heart today. The problem with the welfare state is that it tends to create a generation of people with a strong sense of entitlement....

Trivia Nights are a well-known way of doing fund-raising. Here in Toowoomba several churches have run Trivia Nights to raise funds for school chaplaincy programs. Trivial Pursuit is a board game that many of us are familiar with. Trivia is what is unimportant; it’s what doesn’t carry much weight. Trivia is what we find easy to dismiss. That word, trivia, came to mind when we recently had some days away at the coast in Yamba and I ended up watching a little more television that I normally do. Well, if truth be told, I rarely watch television at all. For me...

I came across a cartoon that finally answered an old question that has become the butt of many a joke: Why did the chicken cross the road? The answer is: peer-pressure. The cartoon showed a hesitant hen standing by the roadside with traffic flying past. On the other side of the road stood some feathered friends crying, “Chicken!” Perhaps that needs explaining to some. In my teenage years if you were scared to do something that others did, you were “chicken”. I don’t know whether people are still labelled as being chicken today to describe a state of fearfulness but I...

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is sinful man’s ability to make what is sinful and destructive into something that is OK. Over recent weeks we have heard about a website that was ‘hacked’ and as a result, 37 million names have been leaked to the public. The website is called “Ashley Maddison” which seems innocent enough, being named after two popular female names. However, this website is nothing but innocent. Although it is classed as an online dating service and social net working service, its target market are people who are already married or are in...

The interviewer asked the man who was celebrating his 100th birthday what the best thing was about turning one-hundred. Displaying some quick wit for someone his age he instantly replied, “No peer pressure”. We often tend to see peer pressure almost exclusively as a teenage problem. Big mistake! Toddlers already demand to have what they see other toddlers possess. And I recall a church I served where one young family after another traded in their car for a 4x4. Was that coincidental? I would be very surprised. In some ways peer pressure is not a huge problem. Let’s face it, when...

In our book club we’ve been reading Theodore Dalrymple “If Symptoms Persist”. The author is a medical doctor whose territory includes the local penitentiary and public health department. The author relates stories about some of his patients. One of his gripes is how some of his patients have come to have a sense of entitlement to live off the public purse. He sides with the long-suffering tax-payer. It’s wonderful to be living in a country that subscribes to the ethos of a ‘welfare state’ where people can be taken care of by the government from the cradle to the grave. But...

I’m not quite sure where the saying came from about something going ‘pear-shaped’. I googled it – but not much help there; with Wikipedia listing more than ten possible sources. The term first seems to have been used in the air-force for planes trying to do a loop – that often looked more pear-shaped than circular. Another suggestion that I could relate to is that party balloons are round when they are blown up but when they deflate they become pear shaped. So when someone’s life-expectations become deflated we talk about things going pear-shaped. In my daily devotions I’ve just started...

Only once have I ever preached on the topic of giving – and that was because my elders asked me to do so. I’ve certainly referred to this matter indirectly on various occasions but it has rarely been a subject that I have addressed specifically. Only that one occasion comes to mind. The reason for my reluctance should be fairly obvious. We pastors are the recipients of the giving of our people. That makes it easy to accuse a preacher of self-interest if he preaches on giving. Okay, okay, we preachers should preach “the whole counsel of God”, so therefore somewhere...

I am biased. I am terribly biased. I am prejudiced. I am frightfully prejudiced. There, I’ve got it off my chest and said it. When I left school and entered the workforce I was envious of people with strong convictions. I wasn’t naturally like that. I tended to want to hear all sides of an argument and I was not very forthcoming with my own opinions. That was more than half-a-century ago when I was a shy and somewhat insecure teenager. I looked up to people who knew their mind and who spoke their mind. Back then I wished I was...

Sometimes the Lord very graciously allows us to see just a little something of the fruits of our labours for the Kingdom of Christ. I had one of those very precious moments recently. An email from a colleague mentioned that a certain man and his wife and children had begun to attend the church he presently serves. The reason the man decided to come to that church was because somewhere in the distant past I had been the pastor there and had counselled this man when he was still a teenager. I had met with him three or four times and...

Like many of you I saw the video footage on television of the response of that congregation in Charleston, South Carolina (US), that lost nine members to a fatal shooting. It seemed to me that the response of the congregation made bolder headlines in the newspapers than the actual tragedy itself. What blew people away was the ability of the family members of the deceased to extend forgiveness to the alleged gunman. In court they testified to their pain but they also showed the kind of grace that is rare in our get-even culture. There is certainly something commendable in extending...