Latest Ideas

Holding onto the gospel: The challenge of preaching Jesus in South Africa

  • Paul Grimmond
  • 1 October 2009

Grant Retief has been working as a pastor and church planter in Durban, South Africa, for the past 12 years. In this interview, he talks with Paul Grimmond about the enormous social issues in South Africa, and what it means to hang on to the gospel and serve people there.

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For those with eyes to see

  • Tony Payne
  • 1 October 2009

It starts with trying to read the microwave instructions on the back of the packet in the kitchen, and having to move into some better light. Then you notice you're habitually setting the zoom in Microsoft Word to 200 per cent. The crunch comes when it starts to affect the

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Power to witness

  • Phillip Jensen
  • 1 October 2009

Have you ever felt powerless? Have you ever felt weak in the presence of others? Do you feel overwhelmed by the non-Christian world around you? Do you feel that your testimony to Christ is too weak and feeble to mention, and that the criticisms of Christianity are too loud, vocal

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Laying the foundations at Church by the Bridge

  • Paul Grimmond
  • 1 September 2009

On the 6th February 2005, a small group of 42 people from St Thomas's North Sydney met for the first time in the little church building on the main street of Kirribilli. According to their pastor, Paul Dale, the focus was to try and be a local church in the

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Review: 'You Can Change' by Tim Chester

  • 1 September 2009

You Can Change: God’s transforming power for our sinful behaviour and negative emotions Tim Chester IVP, Leicester, 2008. 192pp. Picking up Tim Chester’s You Can Change, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a self-help book. It has all the trappings—a title promising transformation, testimonies of change, an invitation to

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Fighting the new fight

  • Tony Payne
  • 1 September 2009

If you were a youngish Christian in the 1980s, it is almost certain that, at some point, someone would have pressed a copy of John White's The Fight into your hands and urged you earnestly to read it. It was simply one of the standard Christian books of the era,

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The temptations of ministry: the three Ps

  • 1 September 2009

Content unavailable online.

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Women, awkwardness and one to one

  • Isobel Lin
  • 1 September 2009

A friend of mine meets women from her church on a regular basis to catch up and pray. But she reads the Bible with them only occasionally when certain issues come up. It’s not because she isn’t committed to teaching the Bible; on the contrary, she is a women’s pastor

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Learning to read the Bible one to one

  • Paul Grimmond
  • 1 September 2009

Russell de Vries has known Jesus all his life. He grew up having been taught the gospel by his parents, and remembers car conversations about the sermon and Bible during the trip home from church each Sunday. The Bible was an integral part of church and home life. Yet in

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The natural salesman

  • Tony Payne
  • 1 September 2009

There were only three of us in Bible study group the other morning, and the other two guys were both in sales—one in property and one in software. We were talking about how to encourage other people with the message of the Bible (whether Christian or non-Christian), about why we

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