defending our faith
Artificial apologetics?
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 5 Jun 2025
In a study of 1,016 job categories, only 36 were shown to be largely unaffected by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These included ‘jobs’ like athlete and dancer. What about evangelists and apologists?
You can ask ChatGPT to “prepare a talk on Why God Allows Suffering” or “present a case for the reliability of the Bible” and, at the click of a button, get some pretty good suggestions. Artificial apologetics has arrived.
It takes spiritual discipline to be masters of our diaries today
Tom Watts
Date posted: 5 Jun 2025
The sentiments of Oliver Rice’s article (en April), encouraging church members to be punctual, will resonate with any pastor.
I have lost track of the number of Sundays that my wife has turned to me at 10:31am as the service begins and whispered: “Where is everyone?” The answer is that they’re on their way. By 10:35am the numbers have doubled. By 10:40am almost everyone is there. The problem is, we started at 10:30am.
everyday theology
Bibliolatry? Us? Really?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 4 Jun 2025
The reason why evangelicals treat Scripture as their supreme authority is because it is the word of God. In other words, evangelicals believe in what is traditionally called the “inspiration” of Scripture.
Today, the word “inspiration” can be a little misleading, as if Moses, Paul, and Luke simply felt enthused one day and started scribbling. That is not at all what is meant! By inspiration is meant what Paul teaches Timothy when he writes of how “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings … All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:15-17).
everyday evangelism
Silenced by fear of the killer-question
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 3 Jun 2025
The following dialogue is fictitious but, as filmmakers say, “is inspired by real events”…
“I long to lead people to Christ but have trouble even speaking about Him. When it comes to it, I just bottle out, and feel deflated and disappointed.”
Leading them in worship - and bearing their burdens
Ben Slee
Date posted: 1 Jun 2025
The sense of grief in the room was palpable. News of the tragic and unexpected death of two young missionaries – known to many – had left a significant proportion of the congregation devastated and bewildered.
I was there leading the sung worship only as a guest; I knew neither the couple who had died nor most of those in the room, but I still found myself deeply affected.
engaging with culture today
Are you aching for home?
Magriet Cruywagen
Date posted: 1 Jun 2025
Before I moved to Glasgow in 2021, I lived and worked in Germany for almost 12 years.
As a native South African, I qualified to apply for German citizenship after a couple of years. There was, however, an important caveat. I would have to renounce my South African citizenship as part of the process. To many of my loved ones this was a no-brainer: “Do it,” they said, “a German passport is far more useful than a green mamba” – as we fondly refer to our bottle-green passports.
pastoral care
How to handle encouragement: Take it, turn it, track it!
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 31 May 2025
“Brilliant sermon – thank you”. “I really appreciate your ministry”. “You are so good at pastoral care”.
Let’s be honest, those phrases don’t happen every day, but it is a joy when they appear. Amid the heavy workloads, spinning plates, regular discouragements, and deep awareness of our own limitations, most of us in ministry (paid or unpaid) appreciate a bit of praise. A modern-day Barnabas can make a real difference to our day. They can spur us on. Give us courage to persevere.
history
Daniel McPhail: A man of continual prayer
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 31 May 2025
It was in the depths of a Canadian winter – on 17 February, 1836 – that various delegates from six Baptist churches met in Montreal to form the Ottawa Baptist Association.
While two of the churches were based in Montreal (an Anglophone work and a French-speaking congregation), the others came from what was a considerable distance to travel in those days: Breadalbane, Dalesville, Hull, and Clarence. Among the stated aims of this Association were the deepening of the ties of fellowship between those “Baptist churches as agree in holding the sentiments commonly called Evangelical” as well as “the advance [of] the cause of Christ”. For the latter, it was stressed, a certain type of man was needed: “Men of deep personal piety – of compassion for ruined undying souls, strong as power, yet tender as a mother’s heart – of love to Christ, which glows with unceasing ardour – of holy, harmless zeal, which never tires – of humility, that sinks into the insignificance of a cypher – of moral courage, which meets difficulties, insurmountable to others, as little things…”
How can the Holy Spirit help us see Jesus more clearly?
Stephen Clark
Date posted: 28 May 2025
The person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ are foundational and central to the Christian gospel which is to be proclaimed to a needy and dying world.
How often the New Testament emphasises this! Here is a small sample of verses:
Is our apologetics ‘frightfully early 2000s, darling’?
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 27 May 2025
Controversial opinion: much of our evangelism and apologetics fails to scratch where non-believers are itching, because it seeks to answer questions they’re not asking.
Or, perhaps more accurately, we remain methodologically committed to answering questions they once were, but are now no longer, asking. With the exception of that old chestnut of theodicy (the ‘why suffering’ question) much of our apologetics output still seems to be looking to undercut the objections born out of the Enlightenment or the era of scientism, and I’m less than convinced that those once-pressing issues now represent the focus of the emerging generation’s attention and curiosity.
Is this the biggest threat to evangelicalism today?
Russell Moore
Date posted: 23 May 2025
Any organisation— business, ministry, school, whatever —typically asks what the biggest threats are to its mission. The assumption behind that exercise is that the most dangerous obstacles are those that one never sees coming.
Consider for a moment that the biggest threat to evangelical Christianity might not be any of those about which we argue and strategise — not secularisation or sexuality debates or political captivity, or institutional collapse or perpetual scandals or fragmentation and polarisation.
Jealousy or joy? When good things happen to someone else
Graeme Shanks
Date posted: 22 May 2025
Finally, he did it! After years of trying, Rory McIlroy won the Masters. After 16 failed attempts he finally triumphed at Augusta.
In so doing, he became one of only six golfers to have ever won all four majors. What an incredible achievement for the boy from Hollywood (not that one - the other one!).
President Lazarus? Understanding US politics
Tony Bennett
Date posted: 22 May 2025
Having spent a lifetime teaching and writing about American politics, I’m often asked this question by bemused church friends: “Why did 82% of white evangelical men vote for Donald Trump in 2024?” And the first thing that I want them to understand is that both they and those American voters are using the word “evangelical” to mean two different things.
My friends use the word to refer to something spiritual centring on the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning man’s sinfulness, Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, the empowering of the Holy Spirit to live God-honouring lives, and the need to preach that gospel to those as yet unsaved.
the pastor's toolkit
Struggling with application in your sermons?
Martin Salter
Date posted: 21 May 2025
A number of years ago I had the privilege of hearing American pastor and author Gordon MacDonald speak about application in preaching.
At the time Gordon would have been in his eighties, and had been a pastor for many decades. He encouraged preachers to think about the different seasons of life and their accompanying challenges, and what this means for the application of their sermons. Here are some of the things he drew out related to the different seasons of life:
The power of community in trials
Kirsten Abioye
Date posted: 21 May 2025
We were made for community, in the image of our trinitarian God. But that community was broken in Eden.
We see examples of that brokenness woven throughout the entire Bible. We can even see examples woven into the fabric of our own lives now: natural disasters and man-made disasters march hand-in-hand destroying our world, and on a smaller scale we can, no doubt, think of brokenness we've experienced. It can feel utterly hopeless.
To a deeper understanding of The Lord's Supper
Daniel McIlhiney
Date posted: 15 May 2025
Recently, two great festivals were marked: Easter and Pesach, Passover. Growing up, Passover was the central event around which my year revolved.
It didn’t just tell the story of how God miraculously delivered my ancestors from slavery; it invited me into that story through a sensory meal called a Seder (literally “order”).
Four ways to serve Christ in science
David Watts
Date posted: 13 May 2025
In the book of Exodus (31-37) we read of the detailed construction of the Tent of Meeting - a portable temple.
This temple required the deployment of gifts of early materials science, engineering and artistry, and by His Spirit, God gave notable gifts to artisans Bezalel and Aholiab. This narrative is “the first explicit treatment of the doctrine of vocation in the Bible" (Gene Veith: God at Work).
