Pastor John (Page 3)

am biased.  I am terribly biased.  I am prejudiced.  I am frightfully prejudiced.  There, I’ve got it off my chest and said it. When I left school and entered the workforce I was envious of people with strong convictions.  I wasn’t naturally like that.  I tended to want to hear all sides of an argument and I was not very forthcoming with my own opinions.  That was more than half-a-century ago when I was a shy and somewhat insecure teenager. …

We had a baptism at church this morning.  ‘Nothing unusual about that!  Christians have been baptising since the Lord Jesus gave the Great Commission in Matthew 28.  All Christians (excluding the Quakers and the Salvation Army) believe in Holy Baptism as an essential sacrament of the Church. Ah, but the baptism this morning was of a baby, as Peter and Ina presented their son Hudson to receive the sign and seal of God’s grace.  Suddenly we not only have the…

Like many of you I saw the video footage on television of the response of that congregation in North Carolina (US) that lost nine members to a fatal shooting.  It seemed to me that the response of the congregation made bolder headlines in the newspapers than the actual tragedy itself.  What blew people away was the ability of the family members of the deceased to extend forgiveness to the alleged gunman.  In court they testified to their pain but they…

Sometimes the Lord very graciously allows us to see just a little something of the fruits of our labours for the Kingdom of Christ.  I had one of those very precious moments recently.  An email from a colleague mentioned that a certain man and his wife and children had begun to attend the church he presently serves.  The reason the man decided to come to that church was because somewhere in the distant past I had been the pastor there…

Jesus once quoted some words from the Psalms that have often left me more than a little mystified.  He was debating with the Jewish leaders who challenged him because He had dared to claim that He was God – one with the Father.  As they are about to stone him for the sin of blasphemy Jesus says, “Whoa!  Hold on a minute!  Doesn’t God say in the Bible: ‘You are gods!’?”  (Westy’s paraphrase). So is the Bible teaching us that…

Solomon once wrote: “Of making many books there is no end…” (Eccl.12:12).  I’m tempted to add: “Of the reading of many books there is no end either…” except that it wouldn’t be true – because one day I will read my last book and my reading will come to an end.  Maybe Solomon didn’t get it quite right either – unless he knows something that I don’t: that there will be books written in God’s new creation.  Maybe! I was…

Technology has changed incredibly in my lifetime.  Magnetic tape was invented in 1928.  Okay, that’s quite a bit before I began “my lifetime”.  But magnetic tape was limited at first to bulky and expensive ‘reel to reel’ recording machines.  However in 1962 (two years after I began my apprenticeship as a fitter and turner) Phillips invented the ‘compact cassette’.  Show a compact cassette to a teenager today and chances are that he’ll look at you with bemused bewilderment.  Compact cassettes…

Last Monday evening the ABC’s Q&A program featured a lengthy discussion on death and dying. Underlying those discussions was that death is one of those “unmentionable subjects” in our society. One is tempted to ask, “Surely among Christians death is not an unmentionable subject?”  The very next morning, after watching this program, one of our elderly ladies was talking to me about a certain hymn. She added that she had put that on her list of songs to be sung…

Preaching last Sunday in a couple of country churches (Goondiwindi and Inglewood) brought home to me again some matters that have often troubled me deeply. That is the need for sound Biblical teaching in small congregations in some of the remote places of Australia and the problem of the survival of these small churches. Occasionally over the years I’ve spoken to some of our ‘grey nomads’ when they return from a stint of travel around Australia. Invariably there is a…

Usually I can relate to a poem that I read many years ago.  I don’t remember the exact words of it but I remember well the thrust of it.  It was the way we pray for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mother prays: Come Lord Jesus… but then she adds: But please let me first see my daughter grow up.  A farmer prays: Come Lord Jesus… but then he adds: But please let me first finish my…