Pick-and-Mix Commitment
By Not Known One Christian writer has written ‘The fear of commitment is epidemic in the western world’. What is true of the western world is probably true of much of the rest of the world. Certainly there is a lack of commitment in areas where commitment was previously expected. There is lack of commitment in marriage and family life. Many marriages now end…
Being the church
By Not Known I grew up questioning and struggling with ‘church’. “Why would I go to the same place, sing the same songs, meet the same people week after week? Surely there are better things to do on a Sunday morning than attending church?!” It was after being taught the book of Acts that I realised I had grossly misunderstood what…
Leaders and Followers
By Not Known Leadership renewal seems to be a hot topic recently, not only in political circles but in church circles. The last edition of the Presbyterian Express, the magazine of the English-speaking Presbyterian churches in Singapore, was almost entirely devoted to articles on leadership. When I returned from Singapore to England in 1998, I was offered a refresher…
Divine “Disunity”
By Not Known There is a certain danger when human beings are united. And the best example from antiquity is there in Genesis 11 where God confused the language of the whole world at Babel so that human beings would not be full of themselves, and so deny him. Throughout Christian history, the very danger of Babel is found not in the world but within the institutionalised…
Lost in the Woulds
By Not Known What actually is the church? The word conjures up many images and associations. We can have a picture of a building in a particular place. We call this church ‘Orchard Road Presbyterian Church’ although apparently that is only one of nine names we are known by outside the church. We can have a picture of a community with people, ministers, elders…
Questions
By Not Known In helping people find direction in life, we often ask these three revealing questions: 1. Who are the three most important persons in my life? 2. If I were to die today, what would these three persons have to say about me? 3. If I do not like what they say, how would I live differently from now to change their perspectives? Usually, as the…
THE X-FACTOR — From Easter with Love
By Not Known The Cross as a method of execution is mercifully no longer with us. Nor are the public executions of Jesus’ day. It was a particularly brutal and tortuous form of death. In one way as an event it is something we can only look back to in history, but in another way it is something we have to live with every day, because Jesus told us to take up our cross…
God Saved the King!
By Not Known April has an important day on the British calendar this year. It is not the 22 April Good Friday, but the 29 April Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. “Look how the whole world has gone after them!” someone enviously exclaimed. Indeed, quick- thinking businessmen have already cashed in on them with the sale of “William…
POP
By Not Known This week’s title is my contribution to the acronyms of Singapore (reducing everything to initials!). For some reason Singaporeans love acronyms. They seem to be used not just for convenience and brevity like shortening Orchard Road Presbyterian Church to ORPC, but for effect, conveying a message or image or identity. This passion for catchy acronyms…
ORPC: “Originally Rich People’s Church”?
By Not Known I was still an impressionable schoolboy when John Lennon uttered these words at a Royal Variety Show performance in London in 1963: “For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands… and the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery.” I had…