Dear friends

Just me this week, and therefore a shorter, punchier edition of Two Ways News in which I ponder one of the ongoing problems of the Christian life—other Christians.

I hope you find it encouraging.

Your brother

Tony

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Dear friends

As I write this, we are now looking back on the pomp and circumstance of King Charles’s coronation. 

The media did their usual thing, mixing extraordinary images of pageantry and patriotism with a soundtrack of celebrity gossip, fashion notes and inane commentary. 

However, in this week’s episode (recorded in the days just before coronation), Phillip and I talk about why we have public events like coronations at all, why they are like weddings, and why the content and symbolism of this particular coronation reveals a lot about the Bible’s distinctive view of human government. 

Read on for an edited transcript, or click on play (above) to listen to the whole thing. 

Your brother

Tony

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This week’s episode comes at the end of Tony's trip to the US, during which he and Marty Sweeney spent a couple of weeks travelling around and running workshops about the ministry ideas of The Trellis and the Vine. As they look over the many conversations they had with pastors and congregations, Tony and Marty discuss:

- Which aspects of the T&V approach to ministry still resonated most sharply with pastors and with Christians generally?

- What differences might there exist between how US and Australian churches are struggling to do more ‘vinework’?

- And if they were going to change anything about the book, what would it be?

Resources referred to:

The Course of Your Life

The Thing Is

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With Tony away on holiday, Phillip has brought in his brother Peter Jensen for a special conversation on Easter, their new books The Coming of the Holy Spirit and The Life of Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine, as well as the upcoming King’s Coronation. 

Below are some snippets of the conversation. Listen to the full episode to glean more from the depth of their insights of our world today and to enjoy some good ol’ brotherly banter in between. 

(We’ll be taking a break from Two Ways News next week. God willing, we’ll be back with our next episode in the first week of May.)

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Hello everyone

It’s been great to receive so many feedback and emails from you, and in this episode we thought it would be great to answer some of these questions that you raised. We’ll catch up on a whole bunch of interesting questions about evangelism, about culture, about ministry, and the call to ministry.

We hope you enjoy this discussion.

Your brother

Tony

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In this week’s Two Ways News I’m flying solo, my regular co-pilot (Phillip Jensen) having been grounded with a nasty bug.

My subject connects with a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the past several episodes. Given the increasing marginalization of Christianity in our culture, is it going to get more difficult to preach the gospel? Or perhaps easier?

If God’s gospel is going to run free—unchained and powerful and changing people’s lives—how is that going to happen if we are increasingly being silenced?

PS

Thanks to those who’ve been sending in questions and comments, particularly about our recent discussion of the place of ‘desire’ in evangelism. To listen to an answer to a particularly thoughtful question on this subject, have a listen to the podcast audio above, starting at 14:45.

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Thanks for all the emails that have been rolling in. We’ll do a special mailbag kind of thing in the next episode (or so) to catch up on some of your insights and questions. 

In the meantime, this week’s edition bounces off last week’s Nexus discussion about our recent history. Why is history important? And how can we make sense of it, especially when there are always competing claims and interpretations of what ‘history’ means? 

The answer (as always) is deeply theological, and therefore lost on most people today.  

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Last Monday, Phillip and I were at the Nexus Conference here in Sydney—a one-day gathering that aims to stretch and encourage ministry workers and leaders in the task of reaching Sydney (and beyond) with the gospel. It was a very stimulating and encouraging day, built around the Isaianic theme of trembling at the word of God: 

Thus says the LORD:  “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool;  what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD.  But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isa 66:1-2)

In the afternoon session, I interviewed Phillip about some of the ways that ‘trembling at the word of God’ had played out in his own ministry, particularly about how a determination to be driven by the Word had brought him into conflict—with his own sinfulness, with the world, and with other Christians. 

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In this week’s rather packed episode, we talk about: 

* Off-colour jokes about Jesus, and how Christians should respond;

* Why ‘community standards’ is a fiction used to silence the community;

* How you can only flourish in the public square as a Christian by pretending to be someone else; and 

* Whether our God-given desires are a good basis for evangelism. 

Enjoy.

Links:

~ Same same but different - by Tony Payne - Two Ways News

~ Seven types of 'apologetics' - by Tony Payne (twoways.news)

~ Seven types of 'apologetics': Part 2 - by Tony Payne (twoways.news)

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‘Bowdlerise’ is a word that’s fallen out of usage and fashion because the practice of it has (until recently) been laughed off the stage of culture. It means to snip out offensive language, characters or episodes from it. It was named after a 19th century doctor who we’ll talk about in the episode, and it seems like it’s making a comeback. 

In these strange, upside times, it’s not Victorian moralists who are demanding that books be sanitised, but secular-progressive moralists. Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming’s James Bond—they have all recently felt the pain of the bowdleriser’s scalpel. 

What are we to make of this? More importantly, what does the return of bowdlerising tell us about the nature of modern morality, and how to preach the gospel to a culture that seems deeply sensitive to offence?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe