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?
You Must Be Born from Above
What does it mean to be “born again”? What is that stuff about the Moses and the serpent on a pole? And what does “for God so loved the world” really mean? And, finally, what does all this mean for us in the everyday reality of our lives?
Vulnerability and Triumph
What does the story of Jesus temptation in the wilderness have to do with me? Did Jesus mog Satan into submission? Or is there something for both “the universe was made for me” and “I am nothing but dust and ashes” people?
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,…
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Alister Pate 