Prayer Focus Each week we focus our church family prayers on a topic or theme. This week, our prayer focus is for generous hearts. ‘You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.’ (2 Corinthians 9:11 ESV) Thank...
How should the incarnation shape our celebration of Christmas?
Dearest Jesus, how will I ever be able to admire you enough, much less adore you, for the wonderful way you stooped to our level? What an image you used in the vine to illustrate your lowliness and meekness! It reminds us also of your fruitfulness and love for your...
Weekly Devotional: ‘Quiet Worship’ (01 Dec 2019) The most recent National Church Life Survey results were released this week, and one area surveyed was the reason Australians who label themselves ‘Christians’ go to church (see https://www.ncls.org.au/news/reasons-for-attending-church-services). The results were contrasted between Roman Catholic and Protestant (i.e. everyone else) worshippers. Some...
I don’t like being made uncomfortable. And yet, I know that following Jesus is not about being comfortable. Just think about Jesus’ call to take up our cross and follow him (see Mark 8:34). That’s a road to death. It seems like the ever-present tension for most Christians in the...
At the moment, John and I are working our way through a book called Wisdom In Leadership, by Craig Hamilton ( © 2018 Matthias Media) . The most recent chapter we have read is on prayer. Hamilton reflects on a common experience to most Christians, which is that prayer is...
A lot of church leaders I know are struggling with what we’ll call ‘low levels of commitment’ in their churches. It seems to be a broader issue too, with plenty of local and overseas Christian websites, blogs and podcasts spotlighting the issue. Average church attendance has dropped in the last...
It seems that Christians are copping a lot of heat at the moment. Whether it’s about our convictions about the preciousness of human life and the preciousness of God-ordained gender categories, or about institutional sexual abuse scandals, or about a general traditionalist, conservative, failure to ‘move with the times’. Followers...
‘What is God’s will for my life?’ It’s a question that all Christians ask at one time or another. ‘Should I pursue this relationship?’, ‘Should I take this job?’, ‘Should I move there?’. Sometimes we can treat God’s will like a puzzle which we must solve, and we get anxious...
There’s no denying it. Life is tough. And a whole heap of demands, challenges and responsibilities seem to eat away at our time and resources. When things get really tough (or sometimes only moderately tough), we batten down the hatches and go into survival mode, and cut things out that...