• Tony Payne
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• 1 February 2011

It’s amazing how easily one becomes a guru these days. Just do the following: a) get together with an old friend and write down a few basic and hardly earth-shattering thoughts about the nature of church life and ministry; b) publish these ideas as a book and wait for it

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• 1 February 2011

The debate about faith and politics will probably continue until the fulfilment of the kingdom at Jesus’ return. As Tony Abbott, the Federal Leader of the Opposition, observed before the 2010 Australian Federal election, Jesus was not a party-political person and nor should he be claimed to support one side

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• 1 March 2011

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God JI Packer Inter-Varsity Press, Westmont, 2008. 136 pp. Recently republished as part of the ‘IVP Classics’ series, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by JI Packer remains as relevant today as when it was first published in 1961. Well, so I’ve

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• Marty Sweeney
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• 1 March 2011

There are two ways to change a culture, as Tony Payne said in last December's Briefing. You can run as many people as possible through your programs and courses and hope for the best. Or, you can work individually and with small pockets of people to change the culture. The

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• Kel Richards
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• 1 March 2011

Do miracles occur today? If we evangelicals express caution in response to a question like that, we’re either accused of being Cessationists or told that we lack real faith in the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. So, how should we respond to our charismatic friends

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• 1 March 2011

When Timothy was exercising respon­sibility over the Ephesian church, the apostle Paul instructed him as follows: “Until I come, devote your­­self to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). Although this was to be a temporary role for Timothy (“until I come”), it presumably outlived

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• 1 April 2011

”What’s your vision for Holy Trinity Adelaide?” This was one of the first questions that church pastors in the US asked me when I was there on sabbatical leave around ten years ago. “We want to preach the gospel and see people converted”, or something similar, was my reply. The

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• 1 April 2011

The Universe Next Door (5th edition) James W Sire IVP Academic, Downers Grove, 2009. 293 pp. I first read The Universe Next Door while I was at university. We were running an evangelistic event where students lined up to take a quiz to discover what world view

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• 1 April 2011

Sydney It's 7 am Thursday, and I am sitting in a café on York Street in the central busi­ness district of Sydney. This is my hometown. The coffee, in case you were wondering, is okay. The Suncorp building towers above me, Grosvenor Place tall behind me, and every bus coming

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• Tony Payne
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• 1 April 2011

These are troubling times in the book business. As I sit down to write this month's Resource Talk, the dust is still settling after the financial collapse of the owner of two of Australia's largest bookselling chains. The management is blaming a mix of factors: the high Australian dollar, the

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