Category: Reflections
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A Correction and a Concession
On 6 July, Bob Wilkin of the Grace Evangelical Society published a response to one paragraph of my article of 19 June, The Fringe of Focused Free Grace. Since he named me, and since some readers will take his reply as a sufficient answer, the record needs a brief correction. This post is that correction,…
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When Believing Is Never Enough
Among the four Gospels, John’s is the one that states its own purpose, and it ties that purpose directly to eternal life. John tells us as much: Now Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these were written, that you may believe…
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The Fringe of “Focused Free Grace”
We decided in 2024 to distance ourselves from those who initiated the fracture Focused vs. Flexible Free Grace. It had become unmistakable that their fringe position had moved to the centre of their ministry, and from there it produced exactly the kind of ripple effects one should expect: confusion, graceless behaviour, and unnecessary divisions amongst…
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Women and Ministry
The evidence in Acts and the Epistles does not support a neat contrast between active male officeholders and merely supportive women. Women appear in the New Testament as disciples, prophets, patrons, teachers in at least some settings, hosts of churches, and named co-workers in the Pauline mission. The disputed question is therefore narrower than it…
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The Oldest Hatred and Its Deepest Explanation
There is a question that secular historiography has never fully resolved: why, of all the peoples who have experienced persecution, displacement, and dispossession, is it the Jews who have been subjected to it by practically every civilisation in every era, under radically different pretexts, with a uniquely exterminationist intensity? This is not a rhetorical question.…
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Healthy Work Culture and Biblical Principles
Every few months, LinkedIn fills up with a new wave of thought leaders discovering that workplaces should be built on trust, mutual accountability, honest communication, and the dignity of the individual. Frameworks get named. Books get published. TED talks accumulate views. What rarely gets mentioned is that these ideas have a source, and it’s roughly…
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Loving One Another Across a Cultural Fault Line
Reflections on Italian Evangelical Life for Missionaries, Returning Italians, and the Italian Church Itself This piece is written from inside affection, not from outside criticism. It is intended for three groups of readers who often find themselves in the same room without quite seeing one another: missionaries serving in Italy, Italians who have returned home…
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Beautiful Rotten Fruits
There is a profound freedom that accompanies spiritual maturity: the ability to look across the aisle, past secondary theological differences and stylistic preferences, and recognise a brother or sister in Christ. For the mature believer, the Kingdom of God is vastly larger than any single denomination. The goal is never to find a flawless congregation—because…
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A letter to the exhausted believer
Dear friend, Read this slowly, if you will. Not because what follows is complicated, but because the thing I want to say is the kind of truth that slips past a hurried mind. You are tired. Not because you are failing, but because you are working. You are straining to complete something that was completed…
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More Than a Morning
There is a version of Easter that costs nothing. Chocolate, flowers, the vague warmth of spring — a cultural ritual that asks no questions and makes no demands. Christianity, however, is not in that business. The apostle Paul, writing to a church in Corinth roughly twenty years after the crucifixion, stated the stakes with uncomfortable…