TRAC Chapel

There's some wacky stuff in the Bible and you might struggle to take it literally, because you think that doing that means believing it's true. But is that how speaking literally or metaphorically works? Is literal the only type of truth, or does a metaphor have truth too? How can we take all the words of the Bible to heart when so much of it is metaphor and so much of it seems literally unbelieva...

There's no specific denouncement of the entire system of slavery from Jesus in the New Testament, in fact there are lots of rules surrounding the procurement and treatment of slaves throughout the Bible. At the same time, it has been Christians who have been at the forefront of abolishing slavery, and they still are today. How can these seeming contradictions sit together? This is the conundrum of...

You might have noticed that I called this series in 1 Samuel ‘Unremarkable’. We began asking the question, ‘Where is God in the unremarkable parts of life?’ Of course, if you’ve been paying attention you might think that the events in 1 Samuel are in fact remarkable. Priests sleeping with prostitutes, a heavy man rocking on his chair and breaking his neck, a magic ark that can make statues fall ov...

If God is real then we would probably like him to make his presence known. He should step in a bit more. It would be nice to have him around. But we rarely consider that it might not be so nice for us to be around him! This is the mistake that the Israelites make today in 1 Samuel 6.

If God is he who says he is, then to ignore or oppose him should end badly for us, right? But does it? Not when we look around. So why let the power of God disturb your life? It seems like such an unremarkable thing and we rarely see remarkable moments of God disciplining those who oppose him. The power of God rarely causes us to tremble. So if God is real then either we are incredibly brave, or h...

NB - This is the audio only from a video talk delivered at TRAC Chapel. You can find the video at https://youtu.be/fT9qINgdOD0 This week we see that what everybody knows about God does not always inform how they respond to God. Eli, Hophni, Phinehas and the Philistines all know some key things about God's character, purpose and promises, but despite this knowledge they act against their own intere...

Have you been following the PreachersnSneakers Instagram movement? What does it tell us about the state of the church? Is this a new problem, or one that God has been quietly exposing by his word since those unremarkable days in Shiloh?

This term as the weather gets colder and our minds might turn to the unremarkable, we are going to visit a part of God’s word where the unremarkable is the focus. We’re in Old Testament times, but we’re not in the heady days of Noah and the floods, or Moses and the plagues of Egypt. We’re not going to see the Red Sea parted, or fire come down from heaven. We’re just going to focus on a bloke named...

My address at the annual Good Friday service at the Wollundry Lagoon in Wagga Wagga NSW

We draw our Prodigal God series to a close at Easter and we reflect on how the two brothers and the banquet are echoed in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

How you know you’re home? It’s often not about knowing, but feeling home. The longing for home felt by the younger brother is a longing felt in all of us. A feeling we know needs to be put right.

Why do the younger brothers and elder brothers of this world, the rebels and the rulekeepers, the sinners and the Pharisees, not get on? Who can end the sibling rivalry? We meet another family member today; the True Elder Brother, who brings healing to our hearts.

Sibling rivalry is as old as time, the first murder in the Bible points to this paradigm. But is sibling rivalry really to blame for the stubbornness of the elder brother, or can he just not handle the reckless love of the Father?

'God, you're dead to me!' Whether you've said those words out loud, thought them in your head or just lived them through your actions, it could seem like that's the end of the story. If there is a God out there and we've told him to get stuffed then it might be all said and done. But Act 1 of the Prodigal God paints a different picture.

What is your initial reaction to Christianity? Intrigued, offended, disinterested?  What do these knee jerk reactions reveal about the state of our soul?  How does the Parable of the Prodigal God expose the truth of our hearts?

What does it mean to be prodigal? Is it just about running away and returning? Who really is the prodigal in Jesus' parable? Why do we keep coming back to this story again and again? This is the first talk in our series in Luke 15:11-32.

An address for the Induction of TRAC’s 2021 Year 9 Prefects

As 2021 begins at TRAC we may not be feeling that peaceful. Can we make ourselves peaceful, or is it always something only given?

What do we do with those awkward passages about God judging, slaughtering and condemning us? Should we skip over them? Could they actually be worth our time because of the gritted teeth comfort they bring us? Find out as we open up James 5:1-6. Full disclosure, I'm aware I have actually skipped over James 4:13-17! I'm saving that for next week!

You gotta serve somebody. You may think you're just serving yourself, but James reminds us today that it goes much deeper than just self-serving or self-sacrifice. When we are confronted with that reality it can makes us grieve, but God's grace turns our grief to joy!

As we begin a new and short series on James 4-5 we are considering some of the vital signs of the Christian faith. There should be stark and striking indicators in the life of the Christian, but they often appear in the most ordinary of places like our wallets, our calendars and our to do lists! Today we consider wealth and our wants.

2020 Fellowship Captains, Meg Graham and Rebecca Scott, have collaborated together once more to reflect on Psalm 13 and how David faced his experiences of suffering.

Are healthiness and happiness the same thing? Why do we naturally conflate happiness with how we feel, especially when the latest neuroscience suggests that the way our brains process our feelings are not always geared towards our best interests? What does God think about about our happiness in relation to our health? Can we find joy when we feel lousy? These questions we consider today as we cons...

Who's to blame for my tooth decay? I may not be the best flosser, but tooth decay is ubiquitous amongst humanity, so is it really my fault? Who's to blame for the sickness of our world and what if we can't find the answer within our world? Today we consider the cause of our sickness as God sees it.

As we kick off a new term we are still in the grip of Corona chaos. We are very much surrounded by sickness and wishing that this illness would end. The good news is that it will end one day, along with all sickness and suffering. This term we will dive into the issues surrounding sickness and health to consider what God has to say about all of this, but we are going to start at the very end….