Articles on Practical Theology

This site endeavours to collect together theological material of practical import to Christians in cases where that material is not readily available on-line or in print.

The site seeks to answers commonly asked, but rarely answered questions.

• Can Satan plant brand new thoughts in your mind? - a consideration of the popular Thought Injection myth and some relevant texts, by D.W. Legg.
• How to recover after sinning - Notes from a 'Christian Basics Course' run at Hounslow West Evangelical Church, by Chris Bennett.
• Who did write the book of 'Hebrews'? - Does it matter? Can we know, or must it remain a mystery? - by J.D. Legg
• Would you like to become a Covenant Baptist? - Read a brief article by Chris Bennett about infant baptism.
• Are you a practical atheist? - Give your faith a health check with the help of B.B. Warfield.
• What is the purpose of Christian meetings? - Have we slipped back into Old Testament worship? Chris Bennett explains.
• Perhaps you are a Christian parent, doing your very best to bring up your children according to the Bible so that they too become Christians. Perhaps you have lots of questions in your mind ...
• More for Christian parents, a couple of catechisms: A short one for very young children, and one with 30 questions for a wider range of ages. Also Bible Reading notes for 4 - 7 year-olds.

Theological Articles and Stuff

This site endeavours to collect together theological material of practical import to Christians in cases where that material is not readily available on-line or in print.

1. The Devil, the Christian and Thought Injection Can Satan plant brand new thoughts in your mind? A consideration of a popular myth and some relevant texts by D.W. Legg.
2. How to Recover after Sinning Despite reading the above article about resisting the Devil, you just did your favourite sin again. So, has God written you off or what? Notes from a 'Christian Basics Course' run at Hounslow West Evangelical Church, by Chris Bennett.
3. Our Brother Timothy Who did write the book of 'Hebrews'? Can we know, or must it remain a mystery? By J.D. Legg
4. The Case for Infant Baptism Would you like to become a Covenant Baptist? Read this article for a brief by Chris Bennett and make your doctrine of baptism more biblical. See also Bringing up Children for God below which presents a more detailed justification for household baptism (or infant baptism as well as adult baptism). There is also a PDF version below - see the summary.
5. The Meaning and Mode of Christian Baptism Many people have had a stab at writing what they think the true meaning of Christian baptism is. Too often, they read into Biblical texts meanings that they wish were there, but are not. This article attempts to answer the questions "What is baptism about?" and "How should it be done?" This is just a short, simple, article, but for a longer treatment, see Francis Schaeffer or Jay E. Adams. This article is dedicated to the elders of Ashford Congregational Church.
6. Practical Atheism Are you a practical atheist? Give your faith a health check with the help of B.B. Warfield.
7. Churches Together and Ecumenism What are the problems for Evangelicals who are tempted to join Churches Together? Surely the Bible doesn't have anything to say on the matter does it?
8. Church Membership in a Post-Modern, Consumer, Society In the Western world, many churches find that fewer than half of the people in their Sunday congregations have committed themselves as church members. They are just consumers,along for the ride, but uncommitted. Is the notion of church membership biblical, or is it just an outmoded cultural manifestation?
9. What is Worship? What is the purpose of Christian meetings? Have we slipped back into Old Testament worship? Chris Bennett explains.
10. Bringing up Children for God (PDF) or Bringing up Children for God (HTML) Perhaps you are a Christian parent, doing your very best to bring up your children according to the Bible so that they too become Christians. Perhaps you have lots of questions in your mind ...
    This article was recently given as a paper at the 2007 EFCC Studies Conference. If anyone ordered the audios of the presentation, it will be disappointing without the diagrams, so feel free to download them from here in PDF format or from here in ISO 26300 OASIS format (OpenOffice.org).
11. One-Two-Three A simple catechism for very young children. A cunning structure allows this catechism to be used with children in the age range under two to ten years old simultaneously.
12. Children's Catechism A catechism for children, with a memory verse for each question, and a set of seven daily Bible readings. This catechism is suitable for use during daily family worship.
13. Small Children's Bible Reading Notes Do you have youngsters who are too young for any published Bible reading notes. This example notes show how any parent can do his own DIY notes for 4 to 7 years olds.
14. Showing Respect to Genesis Chapter One What are the days (yoms) that are built into the structure of Genesis Chapter One? Are they periods of time? Have you been reading Sunday Skool lessons back into Genesis One, or Ken Ham propaganda? Find out, but please don't get upset. Approach the sacred text afresh.
15. Theory for Correctly Interpreting Ecclesiastes Here is a sermon (14MB free MP3 download) introducing a preaching series in Ecclesiastes, called "Don't Do Life the Hard Way". It pre-digests Barry Webb's understanding of how to interpret Ecclesiastes correctly and applies it. Barry Webb's short, but stimulating commentary is in 'Five Festal Garments' from IVP.
16. Introduction to Genesis and Exposition of Chapter 50v20 This is a 33 minute (18MiB) MP3 file of a sermon preached at Ashford Congregational Church on 29th Feb, 2010. It introduces the book of Genesis and focuses particularly on the key verse, 50v20, that summarises the message of the whole book. Applications are in the areas worshipping and trusting the sovereign God, and basing forgiveness of others on a belief in God's sovereignty.
17. Simple Bioethics information for Christians (and others, who want to honour God with their gametes)
    At the end of the 20th Century, Christians were all fired-up and well-informed about bioethics. The 1967 UK Abortion Act seemed to be implementing atheism as the new anti-christian orthdoxy. But since the dawn of the 21st Century, Christians seem to have forgotten about bioethics. We have been worn down by the world's relentless pressure. Time to revisit some basics ...

Bible Study Ideas

• The Genesis Roller-Coaster Bible Study Notes Do you like the idea of being able to cover all of Genesis in 12 studies. These notes are suitable for use by both groups and individuals, and are free ...
• A Home Group Bible Study Idea An idea of a book to study to help facilitate home group Bible studies. The book, by Vaughan Roberts, is called God's Big Picture.
• Another Home Group Bible Study Idea An idea of how to approach Bible studies in Mark's Gospel, despite commentators and traditional approaches.
• Yet Another Bible Study Idea 7 Bible Studies in various Books of the Bible covering the topics:
  • The Bible
  • Prayer
  • Meeting Together
  • Community 'Fit'
  • Community Impact
  • The Wider World
  • Building Tomorrow's Church
• How to remember what the book of Nehemiah is about. A limerick of dubious value, starring the infamous Tobiah and Sanballat.

• A Modern Setting of Immortal Honours William Gadsby's great hymn is in danger of being lost to modern congregations Here is my setting of it to a modern tune, with downloadable PDF and MIDI files.
• A Modern Setting of Our God, Our Help in Ages Past Isaac Watts' (not to mention Moses) great hymn/psalm is in danger of being lost to modern congregations Here is my setting of it to a modern tune, with downloadable PDF and MIDI files.
• A Modern Setting of Father of Mercies In Your Word Anne Steele's hymn is very suitable for singing prior to preaching or Bible study. Here is my setting of it to a modern tune, with downloadable PDF and MIDI files.
• A Modern Setting of Sometimes a Light Surprises the Christian While he Sings William Cowper's hymn is often not in modern hymn books and song books. A crime.
• He Shall Feed His Sheep Like a Shepherd An arrangement of the soprano and alto aria from Handel's Messiah, set for SATB plus piano continuo, or piano plus continuo.
• Midnight Christians/O Holy Night An arrangement and new translation Adolphe Adam's French Christmas Carol. Set for SATB plus guitar or piano continuo.

• How to Find Out IP Address of PC Behind ADSL Router and Log in Using SSH You often find that you need to log into a remote machine over the Internet, but don't know where to find it, i.e. you don't know its IP number. Maybe it is behind an ADSL router that gets a new IP number every time the service provider feels like it, or every time that the router is re-booted. Here is a little script that looks up the PC's IP number,that is its IP number on the Internet, and emails it to you.
• Make your openoffice.org session running Linux open with the language set by default to English, that is, instead of American, i.e. en_GB instead of en_US. A quick little hack that works at least on Fedora Linux.
• How to convert Dale Ralph Davis sermons from .wma format into MP3 on Linux Many DRD sermons are stored only in .wma format. Weird eh? These files are enormous and not very portable, so here's how to convert them to something more friendly.
• How to set up Rosegarden to use timidity to make sound from Rosegarden's MIDI output stream.

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