I'm a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, with two congregations: one in Northcote / Chalice, which now includes Cafechurch Melbourne, and one up the road in Reservoir, confusingly known as Preston High Street. I am
I’ve been struggling with finding some sort of way to write interestingly about my experience of being involved in Caféchurch. The problem it is unlike \anything else I have ever done. It is entirely all consuming, and has been amazingly rewarding and deeply costly – the most fun, and the most pain, I have ever […]
I seem to be having a real problem writing my blog this week. Blame the heat, blame the lassitude which falls over the semi-employed, or blame the fact that I’m busy this week. Anyway, I came across an article by Geoff Thompson that might interest you. Geoff teaches Systematic Theology at the Centre for Theology […]
So if I want to be a critical realist about faith, what then does that entail? If critical Realism, as defined by N T Wright, is appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence “critical”). (The New Testament and the People of God, p. 35), what does that slightly intimidating idea […]
What does it mean to be a questing church? That idea can sound like saying that there are no truths, so that any and all beliefs are OK, spawning some sort of dull, relativist quagmire which has nothing much to offer its members, let alone anyone outside. It can feel a little as though the […]
It’s been a little while since I worked on my apologia pro vita sua thread – more than time to return to it. I had a bash at this article over the weekend, and ultimately didn’t like it much, which is why this is a bit later than usual – I’d rather be late with […]
It’s summer holidays here in Australia, so I’m going to take a break from telling my apologia pro vita sua, and talk about a new project I’m thinking of investing my summer in, in the absence of paid work over January, and the impossibility of doing anything about that fact while the entire world is […]
Advent is about waiting. It is the time between the “now” and the “not yet”, the darkness before dawn, the grain of wheat in the dark, silent earth. The night voyage. It is a time of waiting on the promises of God. One of my favourite stories is Jonah and his giant fish and how […]
So, there I was. Grief, loss, suffering: a reasonable stab at Frankl’s Tragic Triad. But, as I’ve previously said, I don’t want to stop there. I don’t trust theology – or indeed people – who jump right to the happy ending without the journey. But what is the journey? Do I have to do it […]
A couple of weeks ago, before life intervened, I began a little series trying to lay out the building blocks of my own, personal pre-theological understanding/journey. If I’m going to criticise thinkers, I felt I should present my own position. So, this is the second one. The topic? The role of suffering, and how a […]
One of the many, many things I learned on the Camino is this: Sometimes you are wafting gently through a field of flowers, the wind at your back, and the prospect of a good lunch and good fellowship ahead of you. Sometimes you are trekking along a dirt track beside an airport perimeter fence in […]
Alister Pate