A long-time friend of mine recently sent me a link to a podcast that he thought was interesting and wanted my take on it. His interest was clearly piqued as my friend is not prone in any way to pass on much unless, in his mind at least, it has weight. 

Rarely has he disappointed, so I quickly engaged with the content, but in so doing I was experiencing a lot of de ja vu.

The podcast (which I will not name, it is in this context unnecessary) raised my eyebrows when they boldly purported that this platform was…

The author of what has been considered by many scholars as – ‘being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it’ – was written by Peter Forsyth, who fell in hard with the heterodoxy of Liberal Theology, the flavour of the day. Consequently, he was refused a number of appointments in his Congregational denomination for such theological leanings. However, Forsyth was an assiduous academic and loved the Scriptures and consequently delved - and I may add to use an A.W…

(John 8:1-11 (taken from the P.E.R.Version Translation)

…While Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning, after having a time out on the Mount of Olives, Jesus wandered into the temple to do some consulting.

His subscribers sat down ready for their life affirming motivational pep-talk. Right in the middle of this the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who, to their ridged legalistic minds, had been caught in adultery, when in actuality she was just exercising her God given sexuality in a…

‘Civilizing Hell’?  - Kingdom Mission in Chaos Culture

From where I’m standing, there seems two emerging ‘bookends’ that are more prominently manifesting (eschatologically speaking) in the body of Christ in this season. These let’s call them missional stands are happening in this some-what unique time in world history – post-Chistian, and consequentially, post-truth Western-culture.

The two ends that I’m going to identify and language I will use are not unique to me, but have been in play over the last,…

Enter – The Frame 

We open here just after a freshly unveiled Messiah is announced for the first time in the public square.

After approximately 30 years of living as ‘one of us’, Jesus the Christ is not only proclaimed to be among us, but the Son in the Triune God, and His purpose again proclaimed by the prophetic forerunner, John the Baptist (Elijah, if you will, revisited). What was that purpose according this seminal and foundational proclamation? That this Jesus was the “Lamb of God “and He was here to “…

“And He began to teach them that it was inevitable that the Son of Man should go through much suffering and be utterly repudiated by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He told them all this quite bluntly. This made Peter draw him on one side and take him to task about what he had said. But Jesus turned and faced his disciples and rebuked Peter. “Out of my way, Satan!” he said. “Peter, you are not looking at things from God’s point of view, but from…

We, therefore, pray to the most-kind Father through you, his only-begotten Son, who for us became man, was crucified and glorified, that he send us out of his treasures the Spirit of sevenfold grace who rested upon you in all fullness: 

The Spirit, I say, of Wisdom, that we may taste the life-giving flavours of the fruit of the tree of life, which you truly are; 

The gift also of Understanding, by which the intentions of our mind are illumined; 

The gift of Counsel, by which we may follow in your…

“Obedience is walking the Christ Road. The walk of faith is not just internal. If it has no impact on the pain of the world it’s not faith.” 

Charles Ringma (Cry Freedom) 

“Peace is the tranquillity of order – Joy is the happy expression of that order.”                                                                                                                                                             Augustine 

"Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing,…

“With burning concern and mounting consternation, we have been observing for some time now the Cross carried by the church in Germany [or insert your nation/state here] and the increasingly difficult situation of those men and women who have kept the faith… 

Anyone who still has within him the slightest feeling for truth…will have to admit that in these difficult and eventful years which have followed the Concordat, every one of our words have been regulated by loyalty to the agreement…He will, however…

I received a very distressing phone call last year from a young mother in an emotional free-fall over a disturbing news story of a missing girl. The context for her quite literal existential crisis was our 6th Covid lockdown, a young mother of three and a prolonged reading of Old Testament Minor prophets and the many records therein of God’s seeming austerity, or worse – barbarity – with the ‘innocents’. 

Punishments to her that seemed more like malicious and spite-filled torments. The God of Love that she…