Truth Is The Word

Many years ago the Holy Spirit led me into an appreciation of the key dynamics of church life that has served my local church well for more than two decades. I call the concept ROADS – Relationship, Outreach, Anointing, Doctrine, and Structure. How the five dynamics relate to one another Before I develop each of these dynamics, I need to comment on how they relate to each other as parts of a whole...

Published in SATS 'Pastor to Pastor' During the 2012 Leadership Summit Bill Hybels spoke about how he and his elders had recently embarked on a leadership succession process. He mentioned that there are thousands of mega churches around the world who are currently led by pastors in their sixties. In his opinion, most of these churches are in for troubled times because few have considered passing t...

If I asked you why you enrolled with SATS in the first place most of you would mention such things as; the convenience of being able to study at a distance, the excellent quality of the accreditation, or the fine curriculum and coursework. Some might even mention the fact that the academic faculty are so good looking. However, most of you would probably say that it was because we are theologically...

This article was published in Joy! Magazine We have all heard the quote, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Some of us facetiously add the reference, Hezekiah 4:13, because anyone who thinks the quote is from the Bible will probably also not know that there is no book of Hezekiah in the Old Testament. But my theme for this article is not the spurious use of the Bible to authenticate a folk say...

This is an article published in Joy! Magazine I have written several book reviews, but this not one of them. In this article I am considering ‘Beyond Evangelical’, not reviewing it. My purpose is to reflect on some of the things written in this book from a positive perspective and leave the evaluation and critique to others. .  Click here for the full article

An introduction to Systematic Theology, Published in 'A Student's A-Z of Theology' Ed. B. Domeris and K.Smith by South African Theological Seminary Press. Theology is, in essence, ‘faith seeking understanding’, and SystematicTheology is the discipline that seeks to bring together scriptural and church Faith in an organised and life-relevant way. God did not design the Bible as a comprehensive theo...

An introduction to Homiletics, the study and practice of preaching, Published in 'A Student's A-Z of Theology' Ed. B. Domeris and K.Smith by South African Theological Seminary Press. Homiletics, like many other Christian disciplines, is hard to define adequately, but in essence, it is the study and practice of the preaching of the Word of God. There is a strong biblical basis for preaching, both i...

An urgent call to teach creative and critical thinking I wrote this article in 2004. Now, in 2014 the rate of change is even greater and societies and economies have become increasingly unstable and unpredictable.   Click here for the full article  

Church unity is so important yet so illusive. In this article I attempt to describe some of the parameters for unity, its continuum and its locus, before coming to the tentative conclusion that networking seems to provide us with the only viable working model available. Having come to this point in my search I then sketch some simple building blocks . In the final analysis, only the Holy Spirit ca...

This article was published in Conspectus, the peer-reviewed journal of the South African Theological Seminary. There are many different understandings of the word 'Christocentric' both among past and current scholars. In this article the author aligns with those who regard the life, teaching and person of the Lord Jesus Christ as the locus of doctrinal formulation and proclamation but applies this...

Conspectus, the academic journal of the South African Theological Seminary (SATS), recently published an article of mine advocating the interpretation of scripture from a Christocentric perspective.  What I refer to as the Christocentric Principle is an approach to biblical interpretation that seeks to understand scripture from a Jesus-perspective. In other words, a way of interpreting scripture p...

“Pssst! Let me tell you a secret” It seems that there is a secret on everyone’s lips nowadays. Some, like the ‘The Secret Message of Jesus’, are interesting if a little controversial, but the latest ‘secret’ is just offensive. An Australian TV producer and a number of positive thinking ‘gurus’ have collaborated to produce a high profile book and DVD called ‘The Secret’. In their promotional materi...