Wandering around my hotel in Kuala Lumpur it is strange to see so many women dressed in long black robes and with their faces fully veiled, with just a narrow gap for the eyes (called a nijab rather than a burqa). I am used to seeing the faces of people around me, their smiles and frowns, raised or furrowed eyebrows, the kempt or unkempt nature of their hair, the tan of their skin, all at a...
Along with most Christians, I grew up believing that when I die my soul will leave my body and ascend to an immaterial realm called heaven, where I will spend an eternity with God. The only problem is, neither Jesus nor the Bible teach In recent years biblical scholars have argued that the bible does not see eternal life as us ascending to heaven, but heaven ‘descending’ to earth and...
Growing up in the church I often heard people declaring that God had spoken to them. And they didn’t mean God had spoken to them in the general sense that comes from studying and understanding a bible passage. They meant God had spoken to them about something quite specific. Nor as far as I’m aware did any claim to have heard an audible voice. Rather they spoke of a still, small voice...
This weekend the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Sydney Anglican churches have a new marriage liturgy in which the bride promises to ‘submit’ to her husband. This reflects a conviction that the Bible sees leadership in church and home as gendered, and that while bible writers may have applied this in culturally particular ways, the underlying pattern is ordained by God for all...
A few years back I walked barefoot across a 2 metre pile of red hot burning coals. I was at an Anthony Robbins seminar. A friend of mine, an Anthony Robbins fan, had arranged a ticket for me, and so I found myself at the Sydney Entertainment Centre with 3000 others for a three day seminar with one of the world’s leading self-help gurus. It was self-help meets rock show and the undoubted...
Last weekend I attended the Revive conference in Sydney. The keynote speaker was Matthew Barnett, lead pastor at the ‘Dream Centre’ in Los Angeles. The ministry began after Barnett felt God was calling him to serve the people no one else was interested in. Today the Dream Centre serves 40,000 people on a weekly basis, with programs in drug rehabilitation, employment training and...
Wandering through the National Art Gallery a few years back I learned something important about life. The gallery was filled with two types of people, solemn-nodders and bewildered-head-shakers. The solemn-nodders spent long periods of time in front of each painting, chins cupped in hand, ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ emanating from their mouths. They got art. The bewildered-head...
Have you ever have had one of those days where everything that could go wrong seems to go wrong? Mine began with a 4.30am rise for a 6am fight to Brisbane, necessary because I had missed my flight the previous afternoon. The meetings in Brisbane went well, but when I arrived at the airport it all started falling apart. My flight was delayed, first for an hour, then for a second hour. When I...
“Dear Scott, This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write…” So began a letter I received a week after a Moore College student reunion. I had recently completed a Masters thesis and shared with a former classmate that it had raised challenging questions for me about some of the Christian teachings I had always believed. This disturbed my classmate to the point that he...
I’ve only ever preached one sermon that somebody walked out on. It was the early nineties, I was in my early twenties and fresh out of theological college. I was preaching on the Lord’s Supper from 1 Corinthians 11. As a child I had heard the words of this text read hundreds of times. At each communion service came the solemn reminder, “whoever partakes unworthily east and...