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 […]
I go a bit off-piste in the talk – and if you listen to it you will discover why I am still earnestly writing my sermons out in full first. Wealth. Money. Always an interesting topic. Actually, I find the whole topic of money – what it is, how it works, what it means – […]
Every age has its key dilemma, its key anxiety. For us in the post-modern west the key anxiety is the crisis of meaning. What is life really all about? Does it actually mean anything at all? All our traditional ways of finding meaning in life are disintegrating. Given that, I think we will find that, […]
Here is a link to the readings. One of my personal heroes of the faith is the great reformer Martin Luther. His stand against the abuses of the medieval church – from nailing the famous 99 theses on the door the Wittenberg church to his courage at the Diet of Worms, summed up in the […]
This is a sermon I preached a couple of weeks ago about Mary and Martha. You can listen to it here (and marvel at how slowly I’m managing to speak) Or you can read it below. Luke 10:32-48 Sermon at Wesley Church Melbourne 16/7/2016 Life can feel very mysterious sometimes. Random, and often terrible, events fill […]
I recently listened to Rob Bell’s podcast, the Robcast, and was struck by the story he told about his a very unsuccessful book tour which he made. The context was that he had recently written his very controversial book Love Wins – see here and here for a few sample reviews. In his previous book tours […]
One of the controversies I often find myself embroiled in is my use of business style language when I talk about church. This is especially true when I use words like “entrepreneur.” So, I wonder: can a church be entrepreneurial? What, in other words, does Donald Trump have to do with Jerusalem? The resonances of […]
Alister Pate