Sermons, essays, ideas.
Hi, I’m Alister. After twenty years in software development in London and Melbourne, and more than a decade leading a church in a pub in Melbourne, Australia, I became a Uniting Church Minister in 2019.
I’m interested in how you can reconstruct your faith if you’ve been bruised by your experience of church by taking the tradition more, not less, seriously. I also think about how do to church in post-modernity, having spent more than a decade leading a church in a pub. What does it mean to be a Christian in a world of suffering, doubt, and complexity?
The Good News of the Transfiguration
How do we live? This is the fundamental question. Our lives are a cascade of objects and events, joy and sorrow, all conducted in front of the backdrop of a world which just continues on as usual no matter what is going on in our own lives. What do we make of if all? Is…
Wes Anderson, Aliens, and the Faith of the Canaanite Woman
A sermon on Matthew 15: 21-28 I’m a big fan of the movies of the director Wes Anderson , and I was excited to hear that his newest film was out, and showing at the Thornbury Picture House, which I’m also a big fan of. I don’t know how familiar you are with his work,…
What is the most important thing?
A reflection on money, power, Succession, and the meaning of life.
The Cost of Discipleship and the Last Man
How does Friedrich Nietzsche help us make sense of the astonishingly tough demands Jesus makes of his disciples? How could being told to “give away all your possessions” possibly be Good News?
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Alister Pate 