Maybe you’ve already heard about Second Life? Apparently, it’s a virtual existence for those who want a change from their Real Life. You can choose how you look and how you live. It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.
After this I looked: Reflections on the Lausanne Younger Leaders’ Gathering, Kuala Lumpur, 2006Â
Listen to the sermon (mp3, 28kb), recorded at Karori Baptist Church, Wellington, NZÂ on 22 October 2006. (Thanks to Lester Brook for recording it: hosted by Wellington Dining - a division of Lybrotech Computer Services Limited.)
Read the sermon below. Read more…
Oxford University scientist Richard Dawkins has recently published a book called The God Delusion. In his opening chapter he quotes scientists who deny God, and the correspondence with them (usually by those who don’t deny God) and, with a great deal of passion, argues that those who believe in God are – as his title notes – deluded. He makes a telling comment, “if the word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is ‘appropriate for us to worship’.†And so the God he talks about in his opening chapter is that very thing: a supernatural creator, large enough to encompass however we might choose to define and/or worship God.
Introduction
We can read the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel in a similar structure to which we can read the whole Gospel, namely preparation (of Jesus’ reign), proclamation (of a new reign), and participation (in Jesus’ mission). In the first twenty verses of Chapter 1, we can see Mark showing Jesus to be what Mark continues to reveal throughout the chapter: more than just a teacher, more than John the Baptist, more than just somebody from Nazareth. Mark shows Jesus to be God’s Son (v.11), the bringer of good news (v.1), and the very manifestation of that good news (vv.12-15). Discipleship, to Mark, is of obedience (v.17) and sacrifice (v.20). Using the structure mentioned earlier, we explore Mark’s presentations of Jesus and discipleship in further detail. Read more…
Tony Robinson, The Worst Jobs in History (Pan, 2005).
This is a book to read on Mondays. If you thought your job was bad spare a thought for the man who gathered up human waste to make into Gunpowder to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Read more…
I have a low self-esteem. Well, me and about 3,999,999 other people. That’s me and an entire country. I think it comes from being at the bottom of the world. Three hours, by air, to the nearest country. And that’s Australia. To travel to our “Mother Country†requires travelling for over a day. And as a fifth generation New Zealander the “Mother Country†is fairly meaningless to me. My “Mother Country†is much closer to home, in Dunedin. A wander around North Dunedin cemetery will find a number of my ancestors. We have a national obsession that things that are not from New Zealand must, by virtue of the fact they’re not from New Zealand, be good – in fact, better.
Citations of my work in published reports, articles, papers
The Last Word: Why the End of the Story is Just the Beginning.
Talk to Victoria University Christian Union October 12 2006
Andrew Butcher
Text Acts 28: 16-31
Background
We’ve come to the end of an exciting journey. Every page is a new adventure. We’ve met some interesting characters on the way: Peter, whom we already knew, reappears; we’re introduced to Barnabas, and to Stephen. And we also meet, for the first time, the protagonist of this story - and particularly of these last chapters of Acts - Paul.
And this journey - these great stories of the Acts of the Apostles - is told to us by a unique narrator. Responsible for more words in the New Testament than any other writer, Luke comes to us as an historian, a physician - and, importantly for his theology, as we see when we read his two-volume books of Luke and Acts - a Gentile. But Luke was more than just a narrator, telling the story several years after the event. He was also a participant. He traveled with Paul. He knew the stories first-hand. He was part of these events which we’ve read about today.
And now we come to the end of the story. But these last verses of the last chapter of the Book of Acts aren’t filled with ‘happily ever afters’. Nobody rides off into the sunset here. It almost seems like the book isn’t really finished at all. And in many ways, it’s not.
Much was made of “the spirit of Lausanneâ€. We were reminded, rightly, of the seminal conference in 1974 that birthed the Lausanne Covenant, perhaps one of the greatest expressions of evangelical faith ever written. Read more…
…through the whole gospel, by the whole church…
The Younger Leaders’ Gathering took place in the last week of September 2006, where over 500 participants came from over 100 countries.
I’ll add my reflections shortly. But read the stories of others and celebrate that this time to gather happened.
