You may have noticed there is an election coming up, and campaigns are brewing. I think that’s important, and I am following it all quite closely. You may also have noticed that Easter is upon us, and Christians are turning their thoughts even more closely to remember the most crucial part of our faith: the […]
It’s not the start of a tasteless joke. It was the start of my day today, and the pastor in question was me. I want to tell the story, because I’ve been reflecting on it a little. It’s raised some questions and I’m not sure if the way I reacted was the best, so I want […]
Eric Pickles, the UK Communities Secretary, has come out recently and said that Britain is a ‘Christian nation’ and that ‘militant atheists’ should just ‘get over it’. This was in the context of defending a law that ensured the rights of councils who wished to pray at the start of public meetings. That would be […]
If you were to read through the comments on last week’s post, ‘A warning to Christian followers of @RickyGervais’, you’d see they fall into three main areas of discussion. It’s not surprising these three areas relate to the three challenges I made to Christians seeking to engage with non-Christians, particularly followers of Ricky Gervais on […]
A few weeks ago I wrote some blog posts about a document produced to combat the myths use about poverty in our country (here and here). I am delighted that this document is now part of a campaign by the charity ‘Church Action on Poverty‘. I have used their website to send an email to […]
A week ago, I posted an article called ‘Politics, Jesus and Us’. It was sparked by the first half of a document called ‘The Lies we Tell Ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty‘. I was basically saying it is a good thing – though a sadly rare thing – that major Christian denominations were speaking […]
I am halfway through reading a document put together jointly by the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church, the Church of Scotland and the United Reformed Church. It is called ‘The Lies we Tell Ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty‘. The full document can be found here. Like I said, I’m only halfway through. […]
On Sunday, The Independent newspaper published an article by Amber Dillon entitled ‘Christianity is not the problem. The Bible is.’ (The full article can be found here) On Sunday, I also preached a sermon which – in part – was about boldly standing for truth even where it is unpopular. I struggled a lot with […]
Mel and I were having a conversation with a friend recently, and the word ‘power’ came up quite a bit. I love this friend dearly, and I do not question his heart or his motives at all – but his openness to pursuing greater ‘power’ made me slightly uneasy. As we talked, we discovered that […]