This video is something I made a few weeks ago for a worship event at college chapel focussing on Acts 17:16-34. Paul called the Athenians “extremely religious… in every way” The question that occured to me: What would Paul make of Melbourne? What gods would he observe? So I went on an anthropological expedition through […]
I stood at the worryingly quiet tube station with my borrowed briefcase, and a perplexed expression on my face. What on earth was doing here? And what was I going to do now? Aristotle says to start the story in media res – in the middle of things. That’s fair enough advice, but perhaps it […]
What is the church for? As you can imagine, this question often comes to me as I work my way through my three years of ministerial formation. There seem to be a lot of committees – and I don’t think renaming them “councils” makes them any more glamorous, a lot of OH&S, a lot of […]
People claim we live in a secular society, from whence the gods have fled. But, on the contrary, the gods walk among us.
In Carlton, where I work and spend a lot of my time “studying” (aka drinking coffee in cafes, occasionally adding a little cake, (purely for my health’s sake)), the local government has built a beautiful library called the Kathleen Syme Centre. It is a state of the art facility, including a space for the senior […]
Consider this archetypal story. A man named, let’s say, Gary is lying in the gutter, covered in his own vomit. He has lost everything – gambled it away, pissed it up against the wall, snorted up his nose. His wife, his kids, his house – all gone. He is absolutely desperate. Then, just as he […]
It used to be so easy. You got up at the crack of dawn to have your enriching quiet time. At church, which you regularly attended (Sunday evening, Wednesday house group, a couple of committees…) the singing moved you, the message was pitched right to your condition. The Lord was with you, and you were […]
Sermon preached at Wesley Church Melbourne at the evening service 15/1/2017 on the text John 1:29-42 What are you looking for? This is the question Jesus addresses to his first disciples. And it is also the question that Jesus addresses to all of us who want to be his disciples. What are you seeking? What […]
I preached about Zachaeus (Luke 19:1-10) on the 30th of October at Wesley Church. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Zacchaeus. It’s possible that it is due to a song we used to sing at Sunday School: Now the crowd was very tall And Zacchaeus was very small But the Lord […]
I feel a bit nervous about putting this sermon online – I had just read an article (here, but behind a paywall) about a report recommending legalizing euthanasia in Victoria (the state in Australia where I live), and I was very aerated about it. Perhaps the ideas in the sermon don’t fit together quite as neatly as they […]
Alister Pate