Tag Archives: church

Adelaide College of Divinity/Flinders University slides

Here are the Keynote slides from my Adelaide College of Divinity and Flinders University Annual Public Lecture yesterday evening in Adelaide on ‘Leadership, lifestyle and the book of Acts’. I’m very grateful to the faculty and staff of ACD, especially Dr Vicky Balabanski, for their  kind invitation and hospitality. I aim here to look at what leadership looks like in Acts, arguing that the primary leadership to attend to is divine—God drives the mission and growth of the believing community in Acts, regularly in spite of human leadership, and frequently against the opposition of some Continue reading →

There’s still time to register for our ‘Cities of God?’ conference at St Mary’s

There’s only a week to go until the ‘Cities of God?’ conference on Friday 22 and Saturday 23 May, and you still have time to register! We’re organising this exciting conference, bringing together Classicists, New Testament scholars and Human Geographers to look at early Christian engagement with and reflection about cities at St Mary’s University, Twickenham (London) as part of our Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible. There is still some space to register, so don’t miss out! The programme and paper abstracts are available, and Continue reading →

Cities of God? conference schedule and abstracts now available!

We are greatly looking forward to welcoming the speakers and delegates for the ‘Cities of God?’ conference to St Mary’s University, Twickenham in one month’s time, on Friday 22 and Saturday 23 May. The conference schedule and abstracts are now available in pdf format, and can be downloaded from here. This promises to be an exciting and interesting time, with presentations from the perspectives of Classics, New Testament Studies, and Human Geography to illuminate our themes, which are (i) exploring the impact and influence of the ancient Continue reading →

Learning and church structures: a stimulating book by Claire S. Smith

This book addresses a really important topic, the ‘learning’ nature of the Pauline communities (especially in Corinth, Ephesus and Crete)—although the title is technical rather than inviting—and it’s stimulated me to write about a particular point arising from it. In general, I’ve enjoyed reading Claire Smith’s book and a full review (I wrote almost 2500 words) will appear on the excellent Review of Biblical Literature in due course (I’ll post here when the time comes). The particular point that I want to note here is Continue reading →