defending our faith
The New Testament’s P45
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 22 Jul 2026
Have you ever held a P45 in your hand? Most likely you have, and it is the document you were given when you left a job in the UK. A P45 refers to things like the tax you have paid on earnings.
However, there is another P45 that refers to one of the earliest surviving New Testament documents. Dated to around AD 200 it includes parts of the four Gospels and the Book of Acts. It is enormously important to reconstructing what was originally written by the apostles and their friends. While substantially in agreement with the later manuscripts that the Authorised King James Version was based upon, there are enough variations to help clarify the original text.
defending our faith
Job, a witness for today
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
In the midst of Covid, brutal murders,
energy crises, and the impact of climate
change, no doubt many of us are drawn to
the Book of Job as a work that expresses
what it means to live in a world of sorrow.
For apologetics and sermons it provides
a context to deal honestly and directly with
tragedy and pain.
defending our faith
The right to offend and ‘the coddling of the American mind’
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
Apologetics, like comedy, requires that we are able to challenge points of view, express unusual opinions and think outside of the box. Apologetics, also like comedy, is not to the taste of the easily offended.
In February 2021 Merseyside Police had to issue an apology over a poster campaign which had claimed ‘Being Offensive is an Offence’. The force had released an unfortunate media picture of a police van bearing the false claim and including four menacing police offers, one holding what could be interpreted as a cane. In the wake of widespread criticism it was withdrawn and the apology issued. According to the Crown Prosecution Service finding something offensive does not mean you are a victim of a crime and causing someone offence does not mean you have committed a crime.
defending our faith
The Schaeffer paradox
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Jan 2021
If you have any interest at all in apologetics
– the defence of the faith – you will have
come across the work of Francis Schaeffer
(1912-1984).
It
is hard
to over-estimate his great
influence on thoughtful evangelicalism. His
range of writings, from climate change to
postmodern art, reflect a rare calling as a
missionary to culture. There were weaknesses
in
his ministry,
oversimplifications
of
philosophical
theory
and
a
perilous
partnership with secular political power, but
contemporary apologetics is enormously in
his debt.
defending our faith
Loving the creator’s work
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
One of the topics now dominating public discussion is climate change. From Extinction Rebellion protests to BBC wildlife programmes, we are continually reminded that there is a real issue here.
Even Jeremy Clarkson, in the new Grand Tour series for Amazon, has admitted that climate change is a genuine threat to the environment and human existence. Clarkson, not known for sympathy with anything that would get cars off the road, conceded the point while filming on the Mekong river in Vietnam. Dramatic falls in river levels, destitute fishermen, absent rainfall, are all observed – leading Clarkson to admit there is an environmental crisis.
defending our faith
Persuasive, not just loud
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Jun 2020
While many churches have been engaging with social media and establishing an online presence, others among us have felt less enthusiastic for Facebook and Twitter. Such platforms have felt either intrusive or superficial and the concept of virtual church a contradiction in terms.
But all such thoughts are now pre-Covid. Since the virus, even the most technophobe among us have been mastering virtual backgrounds in Zoom and exchanging comments on Facebook Live. For better or worse, the church has fully embraced the Internet age. At Moorlands College we have shifted all our teaching online and my local church now has two Internet Sunday services along with a daily prayer meeting and weekly homegroups. Things will change again as the lockdown unwinds, but ministry will never be pre-Covid again.