The Preaching Pastor’s Encouragement – 1 Thes 2:17-3:10

Godly Ambitions – 1 Thes 5:9-12

Final Instructions Before the Final Day – 1 Thes 5:12-29 (recording is missing the introduction)

The Suffering Servant – Isaiah 53

Easter Day – What’s the Bottom Line – 1 Corinthians 15

Being the Salt of the Earth – Matthew 5:13-20

Jesus Addresses Anger, Adultery and Oaths – Matthew 5:21-37

Warnings of the Kingdom – Matthew 7:13-29

Earlier in the year we worked through Galatians in the evening congregation. This was very challenging and good medicine for us as a church. The rebuke to righteousness as a form of rebellion comes through most strongly in Galatians.

Justification By Faith Not Works – Galatians 2:15-21

Abraham’s Blessings Through Jesus – Galatians 3:1-14

Law and Gospel – Galatians 3:15-29

A Tale of Two Mothers – Galatians 4:21-5:1

Well worth an online read, you’ll end up buying some of them!

Fidelity

Future Men

Reforming Marriage

Mother Kirk

The Paideia of God and Other Essays on Education

Heaven Misplaced – Christ’s Kingdom on Earth

Angels in the Architecture – A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking

Every church should come back to these foundational chapters every couple of years. A highlight of going to Bible college was working through these chapters very carefully in Hebrew with a great teacher guiding me.

What I also particularly enjoyed was seeing God as Trinity and the expected incarnation/exaltation of the Son of God in these chapters. Happy to have read Calvin as my main commentary (Wenham secondarily).

2009 – 06 – 28-06-09 AM – The God Who Creates by His Word – Wayne Schuller – Genesis 1 v1-31.mp3

2009 – 07 – 05-07-09 AM – The God Who Creates Work and Marriage – Wayne Schuller – Genesis 2 v1-24.mp3

2009 – 07 – 12-07-09 AM – The God Who Punishes Sin – Wayne Schuller – Genesis 3 v1-24.mp3

via Sermons – holytrinitydoncaster.org.au.

The danger might be that the person would never properly extract themselves from their plant to devote themselves to study. That is what often happens with part-time theological students.

In my view it might be better for us to change the culture that encourages (or demands) people leave their home church during their theological education.

If many of our current church leaders did their catechist position at their home church, then perhaps we might have given our Sydney Driscolls the opportunity to have long-term ministry during their most entrepreneurial and adventuresome years?

It won’t work for all people. The big churches usually generate more people than they can possibly keep.

But, if we allowed those who planted their own church during their ministry apprenticeship to remain as the main leader, whilst still attached by an umbilical cord to their mother church, then perhaps we might not have missed out on many opportunities to take a young church into maturity.

via Stolen generation of church planters | Youth & music ministry | Sydneyanglicans.net.

2008 – 12 – 21-12-08 PM – Christmas Child – Search and Destroy – Wayne Schuller – Matthew 2 v13-23.mp3

Sermons – holytrinitydoncaster.org.au

I can’t remember the author, but one of the articles was called: “Reaching the Reebok Generation”.

Not cool.

See also: Coolness

Underneath this is an important goal – promoting the option of long-term assistant ministers. But the way to do it is not to pretend they don’t exercise a similar kind of spiritual role in the congregation to the rector, and therefore not ordain them as presbyters. Ironically, it could have precisely the opposite effect than the intended one, and make it less likely that people will remain long-term assistant ministers. This would be significant, since one of the reasons we Sydney Anglicans seem incapable of growing genuinely large churches (say, more than 1000 people) is that we struggle to keep long-term senior assistant ministers.

The Rev Andrew Katay
Ashfield, NSW

sc articles – Letters to the editor September 2008

I personally am really enjoying being an assistant minister – I’m about to enter my 6th full-time year of it. Going into my third year at Holy Trinity, we are getting an MTS full time apprenticeship going, I’m running mission teams, doing lots of training of parents and marriage preparation, supervising and supporting other staff and generally lots of training and bible teaching. I wouldn’t get to do all this if I had the administrative and other acute pressures of being the senior pastor – especially a senior pastor in a small church (who deserve medals).

I also really love working in a great team, under a great senior pastor, and following and supporting him in his vision. It is invigorating to me knowing that I am trusted with key responsibilities and oversight in order to release the senior pastor to travel and work on wider projects.

My wife is happy that I don’t have the pressures some of our great friends have who have taken the gutsy move of being in charge in difficult parishes or places. At some point we will go down that track, but in the meantime we are thankful to God. I can see why some assistants get the itch to hold the reins, and that happens to me sometimes – then I simply remember the benefits of being an assistant and I praise God for this great opportunity.

It was helpful having been to the MTS preaching conference last year with David Jackman on “preaching Exodus”. I referred to my notes from that conference several times (and stole many sermon titles from there).

It was only in the last week or so that someone showed me the new IVP Moore College lectures book on “Exploring Exodus”, edited by Rosner and Williamson. I read the final three essays and found them excellent. I’m sure the rest of the book is good quality.

Commentary wise I didn’t use many – I would often refer to Durham to help me with Hebrew but found the comments lacking theological insight. I should have bought Enns on Exodus, which I might do at Ridley tomorrow.

It is a wonderful book of Scripture – God is glorious, jealous, holy, consuming, on-the-front-foot, loving, and terrifying all in one. Salvation is clearly a work of sovereign grace from beginning to end.

2008 – 09 – 21-09-08 AM – What’s in a Name (Qtn) – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 2 v23 – 3 v22.mp3

2008 – 09 – 28-09-08 AM – Clash of the God-Kings – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 10 v1-20.mp3

2008 – 10 – 05-10-08 AM – Protected by Blood – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 12 v1-13.mp3

2008 – 10 – 12-10-08 AM – Keep Still, the Lord Fights for You – Stephen Hale – Exodus 14 v1-25.mp3

2008 – 10 – 19-10-08 AM – Complaining about God – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 16 v1-20.mp3

2008 – 10 – 26-10-08 AM – Meeting God – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 19 v1-25.mp3

2008 – 11 – 02-11-08 AM – The Golden Calf – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 32 v1-35.mp3

2008 – 11 – 09-11-08 AM – The Portable Temple of God – Wayne Schuller – Exodus 40 v1-38.mp3

Sermons – holytrinitydoncaster.org.au

IRAQ – DEADLY CAMPAIGN DRIVES CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY OUT OF MOSUL
CHINA – SON OF CHRISTIAN LEADER BEATEN UNCONSCIOUS
INDIA – CHRISTIANS FORCED TO CONVERT AS EXTREMISTS SEEK TO TURN ORISSA INTO A HINDU STATE
SOMALIA – CHRISTIAN CONVERT FROM ISLAM MURDERED AT WEDDING
UZBEKISTAN – CHURCH MEMBERS FINED AND IMPRISONED AS GOVERNMENT CONTINUES CRACKDOWN ON CHRISTIANS
ALGERIA – COURT DISMISSES CASE AGAINST THREE CHRISTIANS ACCUSED OF “BLASPHEMY”
STOP PRESS: IRAN
http://www.barnabasfund.org/support/xPFU_index.php

If you require money or even just subscription/password details, people are always going to go for the unconditionally free electronic media every time. Even if your content is 100x better than the unconditionally free stuff.

I’m sure this move by “Grace to You” will result in a long term increase interest Macarthur book sales and interest in his ministry.

At HTD we offer all our sermons for free download under a Creative Commons license. People can repost them, and spread them as much as they like. Our CC license we have chosen precludes commercial reselling or editing, but even this I have no personal problem with.

I’m told that starting next Wednesday, November 5 (the day after the election), Grace to You will announce a new policy, effective immediately, that all of their mp3 downloads of John MacArthur’s sermons will be completely free.

That’s 3500 sermons for free–with no strings (like required registration) attached.

Between Two Worlds: Free John MacArthur!

Sydney Synod Day 2 Missional is the new black « …that great city

daiskmeliadorn: live-blogging sydney synod! (sort-of)

my two cents blog – Chicken or the egg?
But there was some controversy. Bishop Davies stood up and severely criticised the report, saying that despite it’s many fine qualities, it was fundamentally flawed. He pointed out that there was an absence of the language of praise and worship, and also very little in the report about the sacraments. He moved that Synod merely “receive” the report, rather than “welcome” it.

Craig’s Blog: Synod – Day 3

Lowlights:
- Senior female clergy blocking the pro-life motion the day after our state puts through radical abortion legislation that will see the murder of innocent women and the lifelong physical and psychological scarring of tens of thousands of women.
- Motion 7: Being told that the synod was merely there to “rubberstamp” budgets.
- Motion 7: Not being told that the implication of motion 7 was that all budget amendments would be debated in one big random fashion, instead of one by one as would normally happen.
- Budget Crisis: questions not being fully answered, info on screens that can’t be read, detailed reports on CD’s that people can’t bring with them to the meeting, motions to limit debate and accountability, not one job being lost, allowing the diocese multi-million dollar deficits twice.

Bizarre points:
- A theological college lecturer likening allowing Anglican marriage rites to unbaptised couples to the war in Iraq. A+ for emotive irrationalism.
- Passing Anglican legislation to save the environment.
- Synod being too cowardly to condemn abortion but finding enough unity amongst the diversity to overwhelmingly praise the new cathedral sound system.

Winners:
- The diocese administration for successfully getting away with it.

Losers:
- Unborn children, women, and parishes that struggle to pay their diocesan assessment.

“We should not think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an optional addition to the exercises of private devotions. Fellowship is one of the great words of the New Testament: it denotes something that is vital to a Christian’s spiritual health, and central to the Church’s true life…The church will flourish and Christians will be strong only when there is fellowship.” -J.I. Packer

2008 – 06L – 29-06-08 PM – Love is…… – Jordan Hitchcock – 1 Corinthians 13 v1-13.mp3

2008 – 07 – 06-07-08 PM – The Single Issue – Denise Nicholls – 1 Corinthians 7 v25-40.mp3

2008 – 07 – 13-07-08 PM – Pornography and Purity – Wayne Schuller – Philippians 3 v17 – 4 v9.mp3

2008 – 07 – 20-07-08 PM – Pure Sex – Jonathan Smith – Song of Songs 3 v6 – 5 v1.mp3

2008 – 07 – 27-07-08 PM – Just Going Out (Qtn) – Issues of Dating – Chris Bowditch – 1 Corinthians 7 v25-40.mp3