The Geneva Push

They've just launched their website. V. Nice.

Wave

It's kinda cool, but maybe not the "revolution" people were talking about...

A New (Old) Way to Learn

My latest post for SA

Schindler's List

Bought this from Berklouw on Saturday night. Really getting into it. Keneally is brilliant at the historical narrative thing...

Pornography's Silent Sufferers

A very sad piece from Nicky

The Grumpy Bishop comes to Annandale

Looking forward to hearing from him

It's Huge!!

My goodness, check out Kirkplace's huge new building! You don't go in for subtle, do you Steve..? ;-)

Kirkplace gets new site(s)

One of Sydney's most exciting churches, Kirkplace, is moving to a new church site (on November 28th) and has just launched a new web site. If you want to know what Reformed Evangelical Christianity in Sydney is going to look like in 15 years time, go check it out.

The Narrow Mind is back

After a five month hiatus

NT Textual Reliability

Recently I've been chatting to a bloke about the new testament, and he raised an objection. He'd read that there were thousands of variations between the various manuscripts. He felt that they'd been changed for "religious" reasons, and hence were untrustworthy. He wasn't willing to take the word of an expert that there was no problem - he wanted primary source proof.

It's interesting that this sort of question is still raised in this post-modern day and age. Friends of mine tell me that this whole historical reliability question is still very much a live issue. Anyway, here is what I wrote to the bloke -

Regarding primary source evidence, I would recommend you get hold of the Greek New Testament, published by the United Bible Societies and available from Koorong and the Bible Society Bookshop. This text is prepared specifically for the purposes of translation. The introduction contains a list of all of the manuscripts referred to, including citations from the church fathers, and also the date and content of the manuscript. The text itself contains every variation in extensive footnotes, listing the sources of the variations, and the degree of confidence that the selected variation is authentic.

Most of the variations are trivial. I've just randomly opened a page, and landed on 2 Corinthians 12:10. The book shows that there is a variation in this verse, some manuscripts have the greek word "kai" (meaning "and"), and other manuscripts have the greek word "en" (a broad preposition, meaning "with" among other things). Most variations you will find are of about this level of significance.

All my greek-reading friends can correct my definitions, but I think everything else I said was pretty kosher...

The Journey to Joy

My latest post on SA

A New Anglicanism

MJ's latest

10 Million Words

Challies will attempt to read and review *all* of American's bestselling books in 2010. Crazy...

9Marks eJournal

Latest edition now online

Emporium Books

Just made my first purchase from an Australian online bookseller, Emporium Books. Will let you know how it goes. 

Live Out Loud (press release)

LIVE OUT LOUD is an exciting event seeking to bring the youth of Sydney together to encourage, inspire, and challenge them through the message of God's Word. It aims to provide an opportunity for Christian youth to bring their friends to an outreach activity, to live their faith "out loud" and embrace the message of the gospel as they live in the hope of God's grace.

The event will be held at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on 4 December, and is a concert with two exciting bands, Revive and Qurious. It will feature a gospel message from Steve Chong calling young people to put their trust in Jesus, and encouraging them to get connected by joining a local youth group.

For more information, resources and tickets visit www.loudevent.com.

Share this fantastic evangelistic opportunity:

1. Become a fan of Loud Event on Facebook.
2. Follow Loud Event on Twitter www.twitter.com/loudevent
3. Forward this to your friends

A new kind of conference

Rice have just announced Surge Conference. It's a bit different to anything we've seen in Oz before. Check it out, let me know what you think. 

Man camps in Brazilian airport

A real-life example of "The Terminal"

Church Growth

Sandy makes a gutsy comment regarding church growth -

The first principle [from Zac's book] urges pastors to focus on conversion, rather than transfer growth... I felt the challenge of this critical pointer, given that the 'success' I've had since arriving at St Michael's has largely been via transfer growth.

We need more honesty like that...

Wuthering Heights

Watched the first part this evening and enjoyed it a lot. Rather creepy. That grave-digging scene - was that *really* in the book..??

Gulf War penpals marry after 19 years

Quite a sweet story

Calvin for Armchair Theologians

I've been listening to this recently, and it is excellent. Very good writing, and a surprisingly thorough analysis. 

When Churches Wound

My latest SA post

Capitalism: A Love Story

Watched Michael Moore's latest film tonight with a mate. It was a reasonably entertaining flick, though the subject matter was pretty dry. He did not convince me that capitalism really is a very terrible thing, and I don't know that Moore really believes that himself given his love affair with the American working middle class of the 50s. What he does show is that the real enemy is greed, a human constant which cuts across political parties and economic theories. 

Star Wars Uncut

http://www.starwarsuncut.com/These guys have split Star Wars up into 15 second segments, and are asking fans to submit home made versions of each segment. Pretty funny