Essentials

Written by: Ian Hore-Lacy

In affluent Australia today there is very strong support for environmental virtue, in particular for action to counter the perceived threat of climate change - primarily by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This raises questions of public policy and cost. For the Christian it also raises the big question of what faithful stewardship of God's created world actually means, in practice.

My book Responsible Dominion sets out to do two things in grappling with the stewardship question:

• challenge some green Christian waffle which has been published over the last 15 years, and suggest that a Christian approach should not only respect God's handiwork in creation - the focus on green and aesthetic aspects, but also encompass a practical understanding of the earth's resources, which are no less his handiwork. Furthermore it asserts that those resources are needed to give all the 6.5 billion inhabitants a standard of living comparable with ours.
• challenge the basis of secular environmental ideology, which is fundamentally pagan and contemptuous of Christian priorities which understand humankind as made in God's image. That of course doesn't stop it being picked up by Christians and retailed into the churches, as it has been.

The substance of the book looks at what is practical and sustainable in relation to land use, agriculture, forestry, minerals and energy.

Read more: A Christian Approach to Sustainable Development

Written by: Peter Adam

Book Review: Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Eerdmans, 2006

Richard Bauckham is a distinguished academic, a prolific author, and Professor of New Testament at St Andrew's University in Scotland.

In his latest book he works through the evidence of the four Gospels, and the writings of Papias [fl. 98-117 AD], in the context of various kinds of writing and historiography in the first century. He claims that the notion of eyewitness was recognised in the writing of history and in the writing of 'lives' of famous people in the first century, that it has good claim to be authentic, and that this kind of eyewitness account forms the substance of the four Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Richard Bauckham applies this theory in great detail to the gospel of John, which he claims is the witness of John the elder of the church in Asia [not John son of Zebedee].

The significance of this claim must be seen against the background of Gospels' scholarship over the last 100 years. The key questions to ask is: what was the source and focus of the theological creativity which produced the Christian movement and which is reflected in the four Gospels? There have been three answers to this question over the last century.

Read more: Book Review: Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Written by: Wei-Han Kuan

A Christian Approach to Transforming Society

…was the subheading to the recent Ridley College Centre for Applied Christian Ethics ("CACE") conference, "Life Through the Relational Lens", with Graham Cole and Michael Schluter. The word used most often was 'relationism', or the underlying relational world-view of Christianity. Relationships matter to God; God is interested in our relationships with Him, each other and His creation; we should therefore prioritise relationships in every sphere of life and ministry – and certainly in our approach to social engagement.

The strength of the conference lay in the challenge to think through the application of the explicitly relational Christian worldview to an increasingly less and less relational society. This worldview provides a positive way of engaging with public policy issues in a time when Christians are often perceived as having a narrow agenda focussed exclusively on issues like abortion or homosexuality.

Graham delivered two talks: outlining the essentially relational framework of salvation history's storyline; and arguing for the connection between personalism (people matter) and relationism (relationships matter) in ethics. Graham is currently teaches biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago and his strengths in those two areas helped us to connect relationism clearly with the Bible and systematic and ethical categories. His talks were helpful, comprehensive and encouraging.

Read more: Conference review: A Christian Approach to Transforming Society

Written by: Peter Corney

Earlier this year the editor and Peter Corney were discussing the idea that 'a small church is intimate and good'. This is part one of a resulting two part series by Peter Corney.

I recently attended a service at which a senior Anglican Church leader spoke. I was encouraged by his obvious enthusiasm for mission and his concern to contextualise our churches in the local culture. But the bit that made me nervous was his idea that small congregations are better than large and that as Anglicans we have a particular talent for the small church. He listed the usual comments about them being intimate and having a strong sense of community. He did not define what he meant by "small" but he contrasted them to "mega churches." What is usually meant by Mega is the very large – in Australia 1,000 plus in regular attendance. I suspect by small he means the average Anglican congregation with a regular attendance of between 60 -100. In Melbourne in 2006 we had 275 worshiping congregations. When you take out the ten largest congregations you get an average attendance of 62 for the other 265! In fact it's not as even as that, and many have only 30+ regular attendees.

These ideas about smallness may make some Anglicans out there in our many small churches feel better but it is neither correct nor very helpful and full of myths and misleading ideas. The great danger is that it can be used as a justification for complacency or at worst failure.

Read more: Churches - Large or Small?

Written by: Paul Barker

If we think the job of a preacher is easy and glamorous then we will never last the distance. If we are going to grow and persevere as preachers we need to be prepared for hard work. Paul's exhortation to Timothy was by implication to fight the good fight and to run the race. This article seeks to remind preachers of some basics in persevering and growing as a preacher for the long race and the hard fight.

Be prepared for hard work.

Paul calls his own ministry "hard work" (2 Corinthians 11, for example). It is hard because it takes a lot of time to prepare and preach sermons. I still know that I ought to spend at least eight hours on a new sermon if I am to do thoroughly what I need to do in both understanding and applying the text and shaping the sermon. In the busyness of pastoral ministry, it is tempting to cut preparation time. That temptation grows the longer we have preached for we may begin to feel competent and confident.

However long we have been preaching for, we have got to be prepared to spend a long time preparing sermons well. Often for me that means, sadly, Saturday night even though I am always thinking about my sermon during the week.

Read more: Practical Pointers towards Persevering as a Preacher

Written by: Graham Stanton

Some people are saying that nooma is "a revolutionary product that is changing the way people experience spirituality" 1. Others say it's a tool of Satan, subtly luring people from the truth. So what is nooma and how should we respond?

nooma is a series of DVD's produced by Rob Bell from the USA that are 15 minute discussion starters on a number of different topics. I've seen two of them – Rain (responding to hardship and suffering) and Flame (about love).

Flame is about the three different words for love in Hebrew that are used in Song of Songs – companionship, commitment and sex. Rob Bell describes these three loves as three flames and builds to his major point that the flames were meant to burn together, to create 'the big flame'. Sex was made to be enjoyed together with companionship and commitment. The finale sees Bell light the mother of all bonfires and the point is rammed home: don't miss out on the big flame.

These are pieces of absolutely engaging visual communication. They are well scripted, carefully directed and expertly produced. They're perhaps a vast improvement on many a youth group talk – planned on the run, built around the latest funny story, with a stray Bible verse conscripted into service.

Read more: Youth ministry resource review: Responding to nooma