If the July/August issue of The Briefing has already reached you, I hope you are enjoying its contents and are being challenged to think how you can, in the words of our mission statement, “abandon your life to the honour and service of Christ in daily holiness and decision-making”.

Given that our next issue will not reach you until September, I thought it might be worth continuing the theme of June Sola Saturdays and take a look at some other examples of people who have given up their lives for the sake of Christ. While perusing some of our earliest issues (unfortunately not all Briefing editors are blessed with a mental index of every article we've ever published!), I stumbled across our old ‘People in Ministry’ column, which aimed to “[look] at evangelical ministry being worked out in practice” (Briefing #0, April 1988). I thought it might be encouraging for you to re-read (or read for the first time) some of these.

First up is David McDonald, writing in 1988 on the impetus behind the formation of Canberra Christian Youth Convention. This convention ran for a number of years and then morphed into a general convention, and then separate men's and women's youth conventions. I spoke to David recently, and he said that his and his family's involvement in these conventions really gave them a platform for ministry in Canberra. They ended up moving there in 1990 and have been there for the past 21 years.

If you live in a place where going to conventions is not the norm, perhaps you could consider pinching this idea. Who knows what impact God's word will have on your city?

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(Read part 1.)

As we head into the issue of whether we should or even can forgive someone who has sinned against us but hasn't repented, let's begin with one of the key principles that people raised in our first post—that we forgive others as God in Christ forgave us. As it is stated in Colossians 3:13, we are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility and so on while “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”.

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Jesus Christ was a marketing specialist. (George Barna¹)

Recently, a thoughtful Christian blogger raised the question of why a lot of pastors are so suspicious of marketing and are reluctant to use congregation members with professional skills in the area (whereas we are happy to use the plumbers, IT guys and musos).

I sympathized. In the past, I have been grateful to have graphic designers (some within our congregation) design a good website for our church, as well as brochures and invitations. But to answer the blogger's question, here is why we are suspicious.

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Many moons ago, my wife wrote a post on forgiveness. One of the issues that it raised for people was whether forgiveness could take place in the absence of repentance by the offender. My dear wife kindly semi-promised people that I would one day blog on the topic . So here we are, with a series of posts designed to unpick why I am convinced that forgiveness must take place in the absence of repentance and that this issue goes to the heart of a Reformed understanding of the biblical gospel.

Let's begin by reviewing the concerns people raised over the course of last year about the prospect that we should forgive someone when they haven't repented. These are great points that deserve careful consideration. We'll begin with the comments that ensued from Jen's post and conclude with a post by a fellow Sola Panellist.

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This is the final post in our series on giving up your life for Christ in anticipation of the July/August The Briefing. In our first post, Robert Doyle looked at the concept of giving up your life in the context of worship. Then Dave Andrews tackled the important question “What should I be doing with my time [as I give up my life]?” Last week, Philip Miles dealt with giving up one's life in missionary service and the problems with the theology of ‘the call’. This week, a lead ballooner with his/her tongue firmly in cheek explains how giving up one's life for the sake of one's kids is an integral part of giving up one's life for Christ:

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It's well known that John Newton was the captain of a slave trading ship who converted to Christ and eventually became an Anglican minister. Some people condense the whole story romantically by implying the horrific storm at sea that spurred Newton to first turn to God immediately led to a mature and complete repentance from his evil ways—such that he wrote ‘Amazing Grace’ as an expression of his gratefulness for being saved. But for some time after Newton's storm-driven adoption of Christianity, he continued to make his living from the slave trade.

However, I believe it is accurate to say that soon after his conversion, he did begin to treat his slaves better. Yet it was only 32 years after his conversion—long after he'd given up seafaring and become an Anglican minister, and some years after he wrote ‘Amazing Grace’—that in 1780, Newton began to express regrets about his part in the slave trade. In 1785, he began to fight against slavery by speaking out against it, and he continued to do so until his death in 1807 (the year of the trade's abolition).

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We do not have an original copy of the New Testament. The New Testaments we read are translations of the Greek New Testament, which is itself an edited text compiled from several thousand manuscripts that have survived from ancient times. There is nothing at all abnormal about this. Still less is it insidious, suspicious, or grounds for uncertainty about the Christian message. It is, in fact, exactly what you would expect from an ancient text. In addition, the fact that such a large number of manuscripts lie behind the Greek New Testament is a very good thing.

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(Updated with correct link to ‘To God Be the Glory’ and link to Sandy's post on ‘Amazing Grace’.)

Nothing gets a debate going like opinions on church music. But here's an idea that's found very little resistance at church; instead, it's received lots of support: the hymn of the month.

The idea originally came from Covenant Life Church (founded by CJ Mahaney and now pastored by Josh Harris). Rather than relying just on contemporary songs, they saw value in hymns that have proven themselves over generations as true and powerful. They also saw memorizing hymns as one way to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16). They used a different hymn over 10 months, providing a brief background to each hymn and also making a recording of these hymns available for MP3 download on a free or “pay what you think it is worth basis”.

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This is the third in our Sola Saturday series on giving up your life for Christ in anticipation of the July/August issue of The Briefing. In our first post, Robert Doyle looked at the concept of giving up your life in the context of worship. Then Dave Andrews tackled the important question “What should I be doing with my time [as I give up my life]?” This week, Philip Miles deals with giving up one's life in missionary service and the problems with the theology of ‘the call’.

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This is the fourth in Nicole's series on ‘missional lifestyle’. Read parts 1, 2 and 3.

In my last post, I suggested some of the opportunities that our homes provide for serving God in mission within his world. But a home doesn't just create opportunities for mission, it also creates opportunities for idolatry. Instead of being a place where God is worshipped and served, home can itself become a god we worship—or a shrine for the worship of other gods.

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