The Briefing #343—April, 2007

Couldn't Help Noticing

• A Bible for all of life
• Remembering the disabled
• Better a hypocrite than a man who fears God?
• Being a good supplier
• Joel Osteen and American Idol

Bookshelf

• Taking the offensive (message)—Guan Un reviews Sharing your Faith with Friends and Family by Michael Green.
• Questioning Evangelism—Barry Cooper takes a look at Randy Newman's approach to evangelism.

Resource Talk

• What they do in Sunday School—Tony Payne looks at how Teaching Little Ones teaches the Bible to children.

Know and tell

• What is the gospel?—D. Broughton Knox takes a look at whether the gospel we preach is the same gospel preached by Jesus and the apostles.
• Does the Lord Jesus want me to tell my friends the gospel?—John Chapman answers one of our perennial questions about evangelism.
• Living out our hope—James Poland shows us that, when it comes to evangelism, even if no-one is asking us “What must I do to be saved?”, we are not off the hook; we're just looking at things the wrong way around.

Pastor's Brief

• Why did the sermon fail? How to critique sermons—Gordon Cheng has some alternative suggestions on how to give preachers feedback.

Bible Brief

• Daniel—20 daily Bible readings by Steve Blencowe.

Briefing Community

• Interchange—Two weighty pieces of correspondence that couldn't fit into this already bulging Interchange can be found here:
  • Andy Judd from Garage Hymnal has written an extended and very thoughtful piece on ‘Should we sing Hillsong songs?’.
  • On a completely different topic, author Kevin Giles has written a lengthy response to Andrew Moody's Briefing review of his book, Jesus and the Father.

Epilogue

• A time to laugh, a time to dance—Phillip Jensen reflects on appropriate responses in the story of the prodigal son.