In the final podcast of 2024, I thought it would be good to respond to a listener question. Grant has written in asking about wanting to have faith but not being able to , and whether I was able to do a podcast about it. I was happy to oblige, and I hope that it will be generally helpful. (Please do pass it on to anyone you think will appreciate!)

As I said, this will be the final podcast for this year, although I may write again in the next week or two — if you are subscribed to Substack you will get written context and not just the audio podcast.

Thanks so much for all your comments, questions, thoughts and support this year.

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Links

The “What is Christianity” course is available on this YouTube playlist, or via the Understand the Bible app.

There’s a whole page about Church with UTB, including a video with instructions on how to use it.

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In my previous podcast I talked about how the primary mission of the church is to preach the gospel. Some people say that the church should ‘just preach the gospel’. I used to agree — then covid happened, and I saw those people giving into everything that the state demanded of us. This called my beliefs into question! How do we ‘just’ preach the gospel, while at the same time standing up against everything that is going wrong politically in the world at the moment?

What I’ve come to understand is that I (and many others) had gone wrong in understanding what the gospel is.

Sacred Musings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My other internet ministry is called Understand the Bible. You can find my sermon on Matthew 9:35-38 here.

If you appreciate Sacred Musings, you can help me out in a few ways: 1. Becoming a subscriber - free or paid; 2. Sharing Sacred Musings on social media or with anyone you think might like it; 3. If you’d like to contribute to help keep this running but becoming a paid subscriber is not the right option for you right now, you can give one-off via PayPal. Thank you so much!

Many people have been rejoicing about the election of Donald Trump over the last few weeks. It has been hailed as a victory against the forces of darkness; against wokeness; and it has been called a blessing from God. At the same time, I believe it is important not to get caught up in the hype and think more closely about whether this victory is really all it’s cracked up to be. In particular, the church needs to think carefully about its involvement in politics with respect to what is most important.

Links

* Part Three of The Corbett Report on Peter Thiel

* The sermon I mentioned on evangelism

Sacred Musings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you appreciate Sacred Musings, you can help me out in a few ways: 1. Becoming a subscriber - free or paid; 2. Sharing Sacred Musings on social media or with anyone you think might like it; 3. If you’d like to contribute to help keep this running but becoming a paid subscriber is not the right option for you right now, you can give one-off via PayPal. Thank you so much!

I thought I’d do a quick video to share my thoughts about Justin Welby’s resignation. In short, while people are focussed on the wrong things - i.e., Welby’s safeguarding failures - nothing is going to change. We need to focus back on the gospel message, and in particular the belief in sin, the need for repentance and the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit.

I’ve written before about safeguarding, this was my most recent post - start there if you want to see more of my thoughts about the problems with safeguarding:

I have missed doing the podcast over the last few weeks, so I wanted to take this opportunity to speak briefly now. And I hope that there will be occasional opportunities as time goes by to record shorter videos about things like this.

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If you appreciate Sacred Musings, please share it! It really helps me out. Thanks so much.

In the next chapter of Os Guinness’ book The Gravedigger Files, we see how Christianity as an intellectual system has been damaged. I particular appreciate his comments about the faith being ‘miniaturised.’ If the church is to be relevant in the future, it needs to stop trying to market Christianity to people and start following Jesus.

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Links

The pernicious myth of ‘Islamophobia’

An old piece I wrote - “That’s just your interpretation”

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In this chapter of the book we move from the processes which have been at work to their effects. What has now happened to the church? I found this to be one of the most thought provoking and insightful chapters - in particular looking at how Christians like faith to be ‘privatised’, and how the church has succumbed to bureaucratisation.

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Links

I, Sandwich from the Corbett Report

My piece about evangelism / discipleship

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In the next chapter of Os Guinness’ book, we see how Christianity in the churches has become a counterfeit. This has been done through Civil Religion - a blending of church and establishment - as well as Consumer Religion and Closed Religion. What does that mean, how has it happened, and what can we do about it?

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“Education Fight Back” - interview about Classical Christian Education

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The mainstream media love to talk about “misinformation” - and yet they don’t recognise what it is when they see it. Misinformation is a distortion of the truth to promote a particular narrative. Unfortunately it has been weaponised against the church. How has that happened, and what can we do about it?

Links

* We don’t need no education (my piece here)

* How to use Church with UTB

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In the next of our series looking at the insights of Os Guinness, we look at ‘pluralisation’: how the church and Christianity has become one option amongst many. How has this happened, what effect has it had on the church and the state, and what we do about it?

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Links

* I quoted this article about joyless puritanism

* Here is my article about denominations.

* My other site, Understand the Bible

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In the third part of this series looking at Os Guinness’ book The Gravedigger Files, we look at privatisation: as the world became divided up into the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres, Christianity became relegated to the private sphere. How did this happen, what effect has it had, and what can we do about it?

I apologise if you have any problems with the audio. My microphone wasn’t plugged in properly and was causing a buzzing noise which I didn’t realise until editing afterwards. I have tried to eliminate the buzz but it might still sound a bit strange!

The article here I mentioned:

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