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24. PUBLICATIONS
All the following are out of print. I have some titles available for sale... Feel free to email your enquiries. 1. Still Waters Deep Waters (Albatross/Lion) (I have some copies available for sale - $20...
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23. WORLD VISION AND 'GRID'
This just came to mind: After 50 years 'in the workforce' I only know eight people (5 males and 3 females) who found it difficult to work with me. Interesting, all the males were short (I'm tall);...
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22. FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
In the last chapter I wrote pretty candidly about our short ministry at First Baptist Church Vancouver.It was a disaster in some ways: not that the church suffered (I think only a few families left -...
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21. VANCOUVER
A young man came before the Board of that church to tell them of his call to full-time pastoral ministry. 'I put my heart and soul into that presentation,' he told me. 'My whole life was on the line....
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20. BLACKBURN BAPTIST CHURCH
CROSSWAY’S 60th (14thSeptember 2014): Some notes in preparation (with four other senior pastors of this church throughout its history) for an interview this Sunday, based on two questions:[1] What was...
View Article19. INTERIM MINISTRIES
1. CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH: Halfway through 1971 the deacons of the Central Baptist Church in downtown Sydney - Australia's first-established Baptist Church - approached me and asked if I would conduct...
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Fascination with mass media was birthed in my teenage years, from two sources - one dysfunctional (my loneliness, and consequent desire to be heard/read by a lot of people out there so that I could...
View Article17. INTERVARSITY FELLOWSHIP
As I wrote in the last chapter I was 'ordained' (I'll explain the quotes somewhere else) to a ministry with students after I left theological college. The Intervarsity Fellowship (now the Australian...
View Article16. THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE
As already mentioned I've known since teenage years that I was destined for some sort of preaching/pastoral ministry. Teaching was the best preparation I knew in terms of broad academic training, and...
View Article15. PREACHING
I've written elsewhere about what I think preaching is all about, so here I'll limit myself to some anecdotal material. (More to come)
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14. NARWEE BAPTIST CHURCH
This morning's email text-for-today: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who...
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13. CHILDREN & GRANDCHILDREN
We have four wonderful children – Paul, late-40s, Karen, 15 months younger, then after a ten year gap we got the machinery going again and two more girls joined our family – Amanda, now late...
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12. MARRIAGE
My best friend? My wife. One who really cares about me. Who asks how my day was and really wants to know...Jan and I are different. She tells the story of some time early in our marriage when she asked...
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11. MANHOOD
One of the books I wish I'd written is Steve Biddulph's Manhood. Now Steve is more liberal than I about pornography and masturbation and a few other things but essentially he's on to something very...
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10. TEACHING... AND THREE INTERESTING CHURCHES...
I went teaching, frankly, not only to earn a living, but to gain skills which might be useful in pastoring or possibly theological lecturing later. I always knew it would be an interim vocation:...
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9. BATHURST TEACHERS' COLLEGE
I found my ‘self’, perhaps for the first time, at Bathurst Teachers' College (Student # 58000031), situated in a semi-rural area at the foot of Mount Panorama (famous for its Easter car rallies). For...
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8. UNIVERSITY AND WORK EXPERIENCE
I wandered - psychologically - through two somewhat wasted years at The University of Sydney. Nothing had prepared me for the anonymity of University life. These days young people often take a 'gap...
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7. THE 'OUTSIDER' - ALWAYS SECOND
This week I was counseling a woman who began, nervously, telling me she was an outsider in her church. They did not understand where she was coming from. After gentle listening for some time she...
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6. TEENAGE YEARS
Three people who had a significant influence on my life as a young teenager were my grandmother (Croucher), Heather Goss (my mother's bridesmaid, who always seemed to be smiling, despite having a...
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5. THE BRETHREN
The so-called Brethren ('Plymouth Brethren', but we preferred to be called 'Christian Brethren') have had an influence on Western Christianity out of all proportion to their numbers. The missionary...
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