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Members: 400, newest: Jason Turner
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Latest Forum Posts
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Link to us
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Welcome to Cornerstone Interactive
Community is something that we hold very dear. Thousands of people have been involved in Cornerstone in some capacity over the last three decades - and are scattered all over the world.
So we hope you enjoy our online Community - a place to connect with those of a similar mindset and passion - to take seriously the Kingdom of God and to live it in all of life!
Make sure you visit our FORUMS to leave your story, ask your questions, and catch up with everyone else.
Cornerstone's official web-page can be viewed at www.cornerstone.edu.au
Contributions are made to our website over which we have no control. We make no representations about the accuracy of information contained in those contributions, nor should any contribution be construed as having received any endorsement or approval by Cornerstone Community Inc. We are not liable for the content contained in those contributions.
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scripture and the Task of the Church
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The confrontation between Christian faith and contemporary culture, between (if you like) Jerusalem and Athens, is as old as the gospel itself. It is rooted in turn in the confrontation between the Old Testament people of God and the surrounding cultures of Egypt, Canaan, Assyrian, Babylon and then, later, Persia, Greece, Syria and eventually Rome.
Indeed, cultural confrontation and the complex negotiations it generated are woven into the very fabric of scripture itself.
Jonathan Sacks, who we so revelled in listening to last night, wrote an article the other day about the way in which languages without vowels, such as Hebrew, tend to go from right to left, driven by right-brain intuition, whereas languages with vowels, such as Greek, tend to go from left to right, as the left-brain passion for getting things worked out accurately drives from that side.
I asked him at dinner whether he’d had any feedback on the article, and he said rather disappointedly that he hadn’t; but he drew the moral, which I now develop, that part of the power of the early Christian faith was to take a right-brain religion such as Judaism and express it within a left-brain language like Greek. (Of course, you could argue that the Rabbis made up for lost left-brain time with the Mishnah and Talmud, but that would be another story.)
[ Read the rest ... ]
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scripture and the story of God's Mission
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So how does the Bible function in the way I have described? Answer: by being itself; and ‘being itself’ means, primarily, being itself as story. I do not mean by this what some have seen as ‘mere story’, that is, a cheerfully fictive account to be relegated to the world of ‘myth’.
The Christian Bible we know is a quite astonishingly complete story, from Chaos to Order, from first creation to new creation, from the Garden to the City, from covenant to renewed covenant, and all fitting together in a way that none of the authors can have seen but which we, standing back from the finished product, can only marvel at. Speaking as a student of ancient literature, I am continually astonished by the shape of scripture, which can’t simply be explained away as the product of some clever decisions by a third-or fourth-century Council.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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God’s Authority and God’s Kingdom
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When we say ‘the authority of scripture’, then, we mean – if we know our business – God’s authority, Christ’s authority, somehow exercised through the Bible. But what is ‘God’s authority’ all about?
To look again at scripture itself, it is clear that one of the most common models assumed by many in today’s world simply won’t do. We have lived for too long in the shadow of an older Deism in which God is imagined as a celestial C. E. O., sitting upstairs and handing down instructions from a great height.
The Bible is then made to fit into the ontological and epistemological gap between God and ourselves; and, if it is the Deist God you are thinking of, that gap has a particular shape and implication. The Bible is then bound to become merely a source-book for true doctrines and right ethics.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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scripture and the Authority of God
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Part One: scripture as the vehicle of God’s authority
Debates about the authority of scripture have tended to get off on the wrong foot and to turn into an unproductive shouting-match. This is partly because here, as in matters of political theology, in the words of Jim Wallis ‘the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it’. And sometimes the other way round as well.
We have allowed our debates to be polarized within the false either/or of post-enlightenment categories, so that we either see the Bible as a holy book, almost a magic book, in which we can simply look up detached answers to troubling questions, or see it within its historical context and therefore claim the right to relativize anything and everything we don’t immediately like about it.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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A very modern war that is destroying our children
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Why is it that so many children are suffering from depression? Research conducted by the Children's Society has revealed that more than one-quarter of children aged between 14 and 16 said they felt depressed.
The study also found that one in 10 had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, experiencing symptoms of severe depression including suicidal thoughts, prolonged bouts of despair and the urge to cry on a daily basis.
The Institute of Psychiatry reports that the number of teenagers with emotional and behavioural problems doubled between 1974 and 1999. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of children prescribed antidepressants in the UK rose by 70%, amid an apparent epidemic of self-harm and eating disorders.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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Alignment with the Purpose
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Peace with God is not a static emotion. It is a positive gift which accompanies our living in harmony with God's Plan. Dante's oft‑quoted saying, 'And in His will is our peace", is not to be understood as surrender, resignation, and quiescence.
The Christian will discover that he knows God's peace as he is aligned with God's Purpose.
He may be called upon to be strenuous; but he is inwardly relaxed, because he knows he is doing the Will of God. This sense of knowing that he is co‑operating with the Purpose defies human analysis, and is always found singularly irritating by the opponent of Christianity.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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Why Catholics and Protestants Don't See Eye to Eye
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My niece's husband is a trainee Baptist pastor. Jimbo's hip, friendly, and fun to be with.
He's smart and theologically savvy. I like him. He loves Jesus and believes the Bible, and on most moral and doctrinal issues I can affirm what he affirms. We agree on a lot.
But even when we agree, we don't see eye to eye.
Somehow we seem to have reached our religious conclusions from different starting points and through different routes. A chapter in Mark Massa's book Anti-Catholicism in America illuminated the problem for me.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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Peace as a positive gift
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I have mentioned above only a few of the psychological factors which may prevent us from enjoying the peace of God.
To some simple natures it will appear as though I have over‑complicated the issue. But it is the fortunate few whose inward growth and life is so simple (and by that of course I do not mean stupid) that they can quite readily accept in unquestioning faith the peace of God within their hearts.
To others it will naturally appear that I have done no more than touch upon their difficulties, which indeed is all that I have done. I can only recommend here that there must be a full, unashamed bringing to the surface of all the warring elements within the personality.
In making such unravellings and adjustments as we can, we are not creating peace ‑ we are only creating conditions for the coming of peace. When our hearts are possessed by this gift of God, we know for certain how true it is that it "passeth man's understanding".
Outward circumstances may be tempestuous, common sense may tell us that it is absurd to be at peace under such a load or such a threat.
But the gift is supra‑natural, it goes far beyond earthly common sense. It is, like faith, hope, and love, rooted in the Purpose of God.
JB Phillips
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Realisation of adequate resources
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Much of our tension and anxiety can be traced directly to a fear of inadequacy. We should meet this fear in two ways. First, by learning to accept ourselves.
We probably are not adequate for all our ambitious schemes, and only at the cost of enormous nervous energy can we succeed in becoming momentarily what we really are not. This is a self‑imposed tyranny which is very common.
Suppose we accept ourselves good humouredly, realising our limitations and how much we have to learn with cheerfulness and without envy of those who are, or appear to be, more adequate than ourselves.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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The sharing of Life with God
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For sheer practical wisdom, Paul's famous words have never been surpassed. He wrote: "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4: 6‑7).
It is when the love of God is allowed to penetrate every corner of a man's being that the peace of God comes as a positive gift, as a sturdy guardian of the soul's inward rest. The sharing of anxieties and fears, this intimate thankfulness for joys and beauties, brings the individual very close to the life of God. It must be habitual and it must be practised, but its fruit is a relaxed spirit.
JB Phillips
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Cornerstone Part II
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Over the past 28 years almost 2000 men and women have shared in the Cornerstone faith adventure, graduating from accredited training courses. Perhaps the best known graduate is Australian Golden-Guitar winning country music singer/songwriter Colin Buchanan.
A spiritually searching Buchanan made the trek to the desert-edged Bourke Cornerstone community with his wife Robyn in the late 1980s and left having found many things, including his musical voice.
Commenting on this formative time in his life, Buchanan says the benefits of Cornerstone still reverberate in his life.
“The fundamental shift was to realise that every nook and cranny of our lives belonged to Jesus Christ and He was worthy of our unbridled and unconditional devotion,” he says.
“It might have been a shift of only a few degrees, but as the years have gone by, those few degrees have led us down a completely different road than we might otherwise have travelled.”
[ Read the rest ... ]
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MUSTER DVDs now on sale!
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Finally, the Muster DVD's are ready for sale!
They are available for $19.95 (not including P&H) and will be made to order.
Cornerstone does not profit from this product, the price is to cover costs only.
The Details are:
2 disc set
Disc 1) - Video of Les Follent's Talk "Understanding Our Culture"
and snippets of Past and Present Cornerstoners on 'The message of the KOG"
- Audio Only: - Laurie McIntosh's Talk "The Kingdom", Other songs performed during the Muster
Disc 2) - Video of Peter Volkofsky's Talk "Living Missionally", Interview with the Deans, Interview with Kwadwo, 1978 Video Montage
- Audio Only: - Paul Roes Talk "Thinking Like Jesus " , Highlights from Muster Concert Night
If you wish to purchase a copy (or copies) of the DVD please make your order via:
Tel: (02) 6884 0402
Fax: (02) 6881 6450
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Cornerstone 'n that
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It began as the dream of two mates who found themselves reunited in the rugged NSW outback in the 1970s, sharing a passion to see what would happen if they took seriously the commission of Jesus and made it central to their lives.
Almost thirty years on the Cornerstone Community has grown into a mission movement that has impacted thousands of lives across Australia with its call to raw and authentic discipleship and community living.
And if you sit for just a while with Cornerstone founder and National Director Mr Laurie McIntosh you get the sense that the movement isn’t about to rest on its laurels.
[ Read the rest ... ]
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Evangelical movement touts 'Jesus for president'
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They're spiritual misfits. Rabble-rousers. They packed the shell of the old Baptist church on Negley Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to hear author, Christian activist and fellow misfit Shane Claiborne stump on the campaign for a third party candidate, Jesus.
People pack churches to hear Shane Claiborne talk about "Jesus for President," the book he co-authored.
The dreadlocked Christian activist from Philadelphia and his team parked a black school bus around the back. The hand-painted gold letters on the side read "Jesus for President."
[ Read the rest ... ]
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News Categories
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Poll
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Poll: My preferred social networking site is:
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Welcome
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Chatbox
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You must be logged in to post comments on this site - please either log in or if you are not registered click here to signup
 Les02 Sep : 11:12 Wow, Danielle ... Romania! What are doing there?!?
ian r01 Sep : 00:39 did anyone go to hear marc driscoll in brisbane on thurs 28 aug? I couldn
t go. I was wondering what people thought?
dani30 Aug : 18:26 hi from romania! its been too long since i've immersed myself in the good things here, its good to know you can be part of cornerstone, and still receive good teaching and good things to share even on the other side of the world! in remote carpathian mountains of all places!
Steve Johnston28 Aug : 17:55 more spammers on the site...jojo123 looked suspicious
tjjc77724 Aug : 11:18 i have to have half my thyroid taken out sometime in the near future! Will let you know the date and would really appreciate some prayer as i've never had an op before and it seems quite scary to me!
airwalk17 Aug : 08:55 G'day Diane, welcome to interactive. Hope you enjoy your new life living in Bathurst and that you find like minded x'n friends
Victorian16 Aug : 20:22 Hi everyone,
Am new to this forum. Are any of you involved in the Bathurst community? Am new to the area (fresh from Victoria), settling in to new job etc. Keen to expand my christian networks. Would love to hear from anyone who cares to say "hi".
Diane.
airwalk01 Aug : 14:03 No worries Jen totally understand.
tjjc77701 Aug : 13:24 thanks - things pretty yuk so not sure if we will! But thanks.
airwalk28 Jul : 20:15 Thanks jen we will be praying for tim and if you get a chance feel free to drop in and say g'day.
Andrew and Nikki
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