Posts by Gosnells CRC
7 Secular Sermons You May Have Heard this Week
As Christians, we often think of sermons as something exclusive to Sunday morning church services. We view sermons as a special type of expository exhortation, in which a pastor, standing in a pulpit and with a Bible open, delivers a spiritual instruction to a congregation. But this limited view prevents us from recognizing the countless other types of “secular sermons” that are being preached to us daily through our screens, advertisements, and entertainment. Read more…
What Does Trouble Do?
I thought I would share with you this week a short article by Tim Challies on the theme of the troubles we experience in life and what it does for us. Tim writes: “To live is to experience trouble. There is no path through this life that does not lead through at least some kind of difficulty, sorrow, or trial—and often through a cornucopia of them. This being the case, we rightly wonder: What does trouble do? Though we may…
Save Room for Church Coffee!
I thought some of you might enjoy this blog post on Church Coffee. Now it’s written from an American perspective (and they don’t do great coffee at the best of times!), but the principle is probably still true: Save Room for Church Coffee!
On the Danger of Getting Too Much News
I recently came across this excerpt from a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to a friend. He wrote it in 1946, before the internet was invented, before the dawn of push notifications and instant news updates without pause every moment of every day, and yet the wisdom in these few sentences only grows more important the more our technologies and access to information increases. We’ve reached the stage now where we can hear of every new battle, every devastating famine, every…
The Modesty of Looking Away
I have an interesting article to share with you that I read just over a month ago, where Tim Challies reflects on “Modesty Requires Looking Away.” With that title, perhaps you can guess the theme of his article… however, you’d almost certainly be mistaken! In an age of 24/7 instant communications, news and social media, it’s very easy to get caught up by events and happenings that don’t really affect our lives and which don’t fall into our sphere of…
Make the Most of Sunday Mornings
I wanted to share an article with you this week from Desiring God ministries on how to make the most of Sunday mornings (or afternoons, for that matter!). The author has nothing radical to share that you may not have already considered before, but it’s a good reminder of how we can maximise this strategic opportunity as we gather together. In short, “Come Hungry, Leave Full” and “Come Early, Stay Late.” I hope you find it helpful! Read more…
Failure Happens Slowly before it Happens Suddenly
“We’re no longer surprised when we see a catastrophic moral failure. Quite often, we ask ourselves, “How did this happen?” We begin to look at the circumstances that led to the failure and try to figure things out. Most of the time, the failure has been in the works for decades. Seeds began to grow much earlier that have finally grown big enough for everyone to see. Moral failure is rarely an event. It’s more of a slow process that…
Why a Good God Commanded the Israelites to Destroy the Canaanites
“When I was an atheist, I loved causing Christians to doubt God. It was fun for me. One of my favorite tactics was to get them to question God’s goodness. I thought that if I could cause them to doubt God’s goodness, I could eventually get them to doubt God’s existence. To drive a wedge between God and goodness, I’d point to God’s command to the Israelites to “utterly destroy” every person living in the Canaanite cities God was giving…
10 Ideas for Better Conversations
“Most of us would like to learn how to have better conversations with those around us. We would like the awkward conversations to be less awkward. We would like the great ones to be more frequent. For people who know Jesus Christ, we want these great conversations even more because our words are the primary means of coming together, and we are destined for an eternity of fine conversations. The problem is that if asked, most of us would have…
Our Greatest Tool for Reaching the West Again
“We need to keep sharing the gospel, but we also need to point to the evidence of its truthfulness. How can we prove it? In one sense, it’s impossible to satisfy a person’s questions or doubts about the truthfulness of the gospel message (at least until they experience it). But we can point to one thing in particular as proof: our fellowship with one another. And this just might be our greatest tool for reaching the West again.” Read more…
Thanks to Sam’s Spares
A big thank you to Sam’s Spares, who recently provided us with a number of items of recycled IT equipment for our audio-visual team and members of our ministry team. “Sam’s Spares is a 100% Volunteer run Not for Profit Organisation that saves unwanted IT E-waste from landfill. It is run by Samuel Thomas, a young man with a passion for community, environment and electronics. Sam and his volunteer team repair and refurbish computers, laptops, mobile phones, gaming systems and…
Taking A Hard Look
“There are lots of places in the Bible I would remove if I could. Whether it’s a rule I don’t want to follow or a judgment that just seems too harsh for modern sensibilities, my fallen flesh would love to apply a bottle of white out to many verses. There’s one place, though, that’s nothing like that. It’s convicting without doing either of those things. Right in the middle of one of my favourite passages in the Bible sit a…