Category: Reflections

  • The Fringe of “Focused Free Grace”

    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…

  • Women and Ministry

    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…

  • The Oldest Hatred and Its Deepest Explanation

    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.…

  • Healthy Work Culture and Biblical Principles

    Healthy Work Culture and Biblical Principles

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    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…

  • Loving One Another Across a Cultural Fault Line

    Loving One Another Across a Cultural Fault Line

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    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…

  • Beautiful Rotten Fruits

    Beautiful Rotten Fruits

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    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…

  • A letter to the exhausted believer

    A letter to the exhausted believer

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    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…

  • More Than a Morning

    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…

  • Covid: When the Church’s Moral Crisis Was Exposed

    Covid: When the Church’s Moral Crisis Was Exposed

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    Recently, my thoughts drifted back to the “Covid times” for several reasons.  My plumber’s brother fell ill last year and was diagnosed with myocarditis.  Interestingly, the first question the hospital doctors asked him was “How many doses of Covid vaccine did you have?”  This is a stark contrast to the shunning faced by those who…

  • The Gospel: not good advice to be obeyed but good news to be believed

    The Gospel: not good advice to be obeyed but good news to be believed

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    In modern evangelical circles, we often hear a message that sounds deeply pious: “If you want to be saved, you must surrender every area of your life to God. You must put everything on the altar. You must pay the price of discipleship to receive the gift of salvation.” While these sentiments may aim to produce…