During my first year of pastoral ministry I experienced a crisis of faith. I had entered theological college four years previously with the confidence of both youth – I was only twenty years old – and fundamentalism. I knew what I believed and knew it with utter certainty to be true. Theological college put paid to that. I discovered students, theologians and philosophers who saw...
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...
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...
Last year my eldest brother gave a speech at my father’s funeral. My other siblings and I had rhapsodised about Dad’s virtues. But my elder brother talked about Dad’s imperfections. He recognised that Dad was flawed like the rest of us. But the thing that impressed him about Dad was Dad’s determination to be a better man. He was a good man, but he wanted to be more than a...