Sermons, essays, ideas.
Hi, I’m Alister. After twenty years in software development in London and Melbourne, and more than a decade leading a church in a pub in Melbourne, Australia, I became a Uniting Church Minister in 2019.
I’m interested in how you can reconstruct your faith if you’ve been bruised by your experience of church by taking the tradition more, not less, seriously. I also think about how do to church in post-modernity, having spent more than a decade leading a church in a pub. What does it mean to be a Christian in a world of suffering, doubt, and complexity?
A hard text for hard times: Genesis 22:1-14
The “Binding of Isaac” has to be one of the most challenging passages out there. Does God really call Abraham to sacrifice his son? What does it mean for us to find ourselves at the extreme edges of our faith?
Those who lose their lives for my sake will gain it.
Jesus’ prediction of conflict and oppression for his disciples is a hard reading. Yet, it reveals something profoundly helpful about who Jesus is and what it means to be a disciple.
Love, Liberalism and the Meaning of Life
How a fourth century thinker helps us challenge the meaningless universe of (post-)modernity. Was love the answer all along?
Jesus, Month Python, and The Mandalorian
Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father, except through me” Did he mean something like “if you want to get to the Father, you have to get through me first? Is Jesus standing in the way, preventing people from getting to God, like a soothsayer on…
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Alister Pate 