the ENd word
Lead on Good Shepherd
Jon Barrett
As a kid growing up in a Christian family
I was
always
familiar with
the 23rd
Psalm, although for some while my young
mind was confused about who “Shirley
Goodness” was, or why she’d want to follow
me all the days of my life.
I had a bit of a gift as a youngster
for mishearing things, also spending time
pondering what a “foggle” was after first
hearing
the
song Bright Eyes –
it wasn’t
until I was in my 20s that I realised Art
Garfunkle actually sang “there’s a fog along
the horizon!”
the ENd word
From fed up to fed
Jon Barrett
There was a time when I got a bit fed up with the 23rd psalm.
Admittedly, it’s not a great way to feel about a piece of Scripture, but I’d come to associate the psalm almost entirely with funerals of unbelievers. While an Anglican minister, before moving to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC), I conducted many such funerals, and the default hymn choice for the generation of non-churchgoers I was burying was Abide With Me and The Lord’s my Shepherd, the latter always sung to the tune of Crimond.
Is our apologetics ‘frightfully early 2000s, darling’?
Jon Barrett
Controversial opinion: much of our evangelism and apologetics fails to scratch where non-believers are itching, because it seeks to answer questions they’re not asking.
Or, perhaps more accurately, we remain methodologically committed to answering questions they once were, but are now no longer, asking. With the exception of that old chestnut of theodicy (the ‘why suffering’ question) much of our apologetics output still seems to be looking to undercut the objections born out of the Enlightenment or the era of scientism, and I’m less than convinced that those once-pressing issues now represent the focus of the emerging generation’s attention and curiosity.
