At church on Sunday I roadtested the radical suggestion I made in last month’s sydneyanglicans.net article entitled ‘The word of God, loud and clear’. In this article, I suggested the following:
“In normal situations, we listen to the Bible read before the preacher explains and expands the text. Wouldn’t it be better to hear the Bible expounded, and then hear it read? The text would gain even greater clarity, and the meaning would be amplified by the exposition just presented by the preacher.”
Well, it might shock you to know that before I had written the article, I had never seen this done in real life. It was simply an exercise in kite-flying, so to speak.
Anyway, when I put together the runsheet on Sunday for the gathering I was leading, I gave it a try, and it worked a treat. Not only did the Bible reader read with more clarity (since she had just been given a twenty-minute preparation for her task), but the whole congregation also benefited from hearing the word of God, after it was explained.
What’s more, it made the reading of the Word appear to have a centrality in the gathering that I’ve not experienced before. It was as if the reading of the sermon passage was the peak of the word ministry.
Have you ever tried this retrospective reading? Have you ever witnessed it first-hand?
It was only a matter of time before the secular media began to affirm what Christians have been saying for years (if not decades) that pornography is harmful. In her incisive and challenging article in today’s SMH, Adele Horin mounts the case for concern in the ever-rising popularity of Internet porn.
Listing case study after case study, and compounding the evidence with a barrage of statistics, Horin demonstrates the effect of porn on marriage and relationships. At its best, the viewing of explicit material leads men to choose the internet instead of intimacy. At its worst, the attendant secrecy breeds distrust, and marriage failure.
Sexuality is a beautiful gift from God, for enjoyment and procreation in marriage. The sooner people wake up to this fact, the sooner marriages will be stronger, and God will be glorified.
If you are a regular visitor to my site then you will know that it’s been a while since my last post. Things have been particularly full-on with work, especially the launch of the new Year 13 Gospel Gap Year program for 2008. Check out www.year13.youthworks.net to see what’s new!
This long gap between posts has made me realise the tyranny of irregularity. When it’s been a while since the last update, the next update gets harder and harder every day of delay. You feel the need to apologise, and what’s worse, the need to fill in every thing that has happened in the meanwhile.
But the problem gets worse. Once you’ve resolved to fill in the gaps, there is a natural tendency to want to post lots of catch-up articles. Is this good nettiquete? Is it ok to fill up your feed with all the articles you should have written before, or is it better to just let it all go?
Finally, just how often does a person need to post to be regular?
PS – I’ve got to say, it feels good to post again…!
Jodie McNeill lives in Sydney, Australia, and is the Executive Director of 
