The Briefing #353—February, 2008

Couldn't Help Noticing

• The ever-flowing river of language
• Preaching and pulpiteering
• Sunday school for Aussie atheists?
• Golden opportunity
• Short thoughts on death and mortality

• FallacyWatch: Gus the Greek—Tony Payne highlights the problems with deriving the meaning of a word from its origins.

Bookshelf

• The satirical Christian—Ben Beilharz considers whether Christians can use satire.

Politeness and polemics

• Fight the good fight (Part 1): A time to break down and a time to build up—Tony Payne reflects on whether Christians ought to be nasty or nice.
• Matters of indifference?—Mark Thompson looks at the criteria we should use to separate the important from the unimportant in matters where Christians disagree.

The Christian life

• The joys of drudgery—Lee Carter shows us why drudgery is one of the joys of the Christian life.

Pastor's Brief

• The importance of preaching the negative as well as the positive—Phillip Jensen tells us why preaching the negative is not only important, it is vital.
• Lessons from serving in a hard church—A pastor and self-described ‘boofhead’ shares his top five lessons from serving in a hard church.

Bible Brief

• The family—20 daily Bible readings by Ben Beilharz.