Sermon: A Lesson From The Lost
Preaching from the Prodigal Son story in Luke 15:11-32.
Preached at St Luke’s Liverpool on the 30th of January 2011
Justin Bieber Must Die!
Look, I’m just going to put it out there. What I’m about to say won’t win me any friends or make me Mr Popular on the internet. But you need to hear this.
Justin Bieber bashing is not cool.
Webcomics Monday: Something Positive and Puppets
In general, Christians are really keen to use everything at their disposal to tell people about Jesus. However, this earnestness can go really, really wrong. There are no shortage of examples of Christians trying to engage with culture and producing horrific results. The kind of thing that scars children and gives them nightmares for life.
Something Positive presents for your appraisal: Christian puppets.
I have puppets that I use for Christian ministry. They are cute and fun. My orangutan Doctor Zaius will not consume your soul. But he might give you a hug.
Sermon: Luke 12
As part of a series looking at parables in the Gospel of Luke, here’s my sermon on Luke 12:13-21 called “The Great Aussie Dream.”
Preached at St Luke’s Liverpool on January 16 2011.
Football and Adultery
If a football player appears in the news outside of the sports section, chances are it’s not because they’ve been behaving themselves. It seems there’s always one scandal or another rocking the football community, regardless of which code you follow. Players cheating with each others wives, engaging in group sex, accused of rape, having photos of them naked and/or molesting animals leaded on the internet, getting drunk and assaulting people in night clubs… really it’s not that hard to think of examples of footballers misbehaving.
Parable
It’s no secret that I love comics. And it’s no secret that I love Jesus. However, it’s not often that these two loves of mine intersect. When it comes to Christian comics, it’s apparently really hard to punch out a quality product. The Christian stuff can be really good, but the art is boring and uninspired. Or the art can be really good, but in the process really misses the mark and you’re left with something that’s not quite Christian. Worse case scenario? The art is bad and the message is dodgy. What we need are more good Christian comics.
Parable is a really, really good Christian comic.
From Formspring: Is Fishing Biblical?
I’ve been pretty slack with answering questions off my Formspring site. Today that changes. Each week I’m going to try and answer at least one question both here and on Formspring. If you have any questions about Jesus or pop culture that you’d like answered, head on over and ask away!
Today’s question: Is fishing biblical?
Webcomics Monday: Grace and Penny Arcade
If Jesus came over for dinner, would it be weird? Last November, Jesus joined the Penny Arcade crew for Thanksgiving. In the Gospels, we see plenty of occasions where Jesus sat down and shared a meal with people. He must have been a good dinner guest as people kept inviting him to parties. If you had Jesus over for dinner, what would you talk about? What would you eat? And most importantly, would you say grace? Would saying grace open up some kind of trinitarian brain explosion?
My Top Movies of 2010
Sometime around July last year, I got an email from my editor at Fervr. He’d managed to get the site added to several press lists for movie distributors. What this meant was that Fervr was now invited to special advanced screenings of movies, weeks before they are shown to the public. And I got first dibs on all the invitations. Joy! Now while I couldn’t make it to every movie I was invited to (or in one case even find the cinema it was being screened in) I did see a fair few movies last year. And because of these invitations, I was able to see some movies that ordinarily I may not have gone to.
Here are my top 5 movies for 2010. I remind you that I didn’t see everything, so there are some absences from this list that might surprise you. For instance, I haven’t seen Toy Story 3 yet. I own it on DVD but haven’t sat down to watch it yet.
Welcome to 2011
Hi there. I know it’s been a while. No articles since October last year. Why the silence? At the end of last year:
- I completed my theological degree at Moore College. In the last term of college I submitted over 10,000 words worth of essays plus a final year exam. Needless to say, that was pretty stressful.
- Finished up co-ordinating school Scripture at North Newtown Public School, including arranging end of year presents, running the Christmas assembly, and handing over the co-ordinating reigns to another.
- Moved house from a small apartment in Croydon Park to a very nice (and large) house in Casula.
- Changed positions at my church, going from the one day a week student minister to the full time Associate Minister of St Luke’s Liverpool. Switching offices, sorting out Christmas and figuring out my new responsibilites have taken up a fair chunk of time.
So this week, I’ve finally got my office into a somewhat workable state, we’ve unpacked most of the boxes at home, and we’ve finally got the internet connected (I was beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms). Now all that is sorted, time to get Pop Culture Christ back up and running. I’m not sure what Pop Culture Christ will look like this year and how updating the site will fit into my new responsibilities. At this stage I’m hoping to get a new post up every week. WordPress have issued the “post a day 2011” challenge. I dont’ think I’ll be going that route. Though the “post a week 2011” challenge may be more manageable. I’m now living a bit further from the city, so I’m unsure how many press screenings for movies I’ll be able to make this year, so don’t expect the movie reviews to come as frequently as they did in 2010. God willing I’ll have Webcomic Monday up and running as a regular feature. I’m also looking into converting some of the essays I wrote for college last year into Pop Culture Christ essays, so keep an eye out.
Coming tomorrow will be a list of my favourite movies of 2010. Seems like everyone else is churning out a list, so I thought I’d join in. Any suggestions for what should be on my list?
As always, appreciate any and all suggestions for what you’d like to see on Pop Culture Christ.
Joel A
Pop Culture Christ 
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