by Brian Edgar
What is the future of faith? What future is there for the church? These were the matters discussed on the ABC’s Sunday Night Talk (July 18) with Jon Cleary, myself, Andrew McGowan (Warden of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne) and Dr Margaret Beirne, a Catholic sister of Charity and senior lecturer in Biblical studies at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox theological college.
You can read Jon’s comments and download the whole program as a podcast from the ABC site.
Before the program started I made some notes on what I thought. Note carefully, that these are only notes. But they might stimulate your own thought on the topic. Read More
What Hope is there for Mission?
It was a privilege to recently give the Whitley College 2010 Annual Missiology Lecture. Whitley College, part of the University of Melbourne, is the Baptist training college in Melbourne. The lecture was subsequently published in the Australian Journal of Mission Studies. Vol. 4, No.2 (Dec 2010) 55-61. The lecture begins with the material below, but the full text can also be downloaded here.
The humour of this kind of “end of the world” cartoon reminds us that there is a certain disdain for crazy preachers who proclaim the end of all things, but we ought to remember that Jesus came into Galilee as an end-time preacher, saying, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15). It might be good if the church was more willing to sound equally crazy in saying that the kingdom of God is a lot closer than many realize, and that we are nearly there at every moment of time! The Celtic Christian tradition has a saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, and that in the “thin” places the distance is even less. This is a way of saying that there are times and places when it seems that the veil between heaven and earth is lifted and we are able to get a glimpse, a sense of the holy. Read More »