word | spirit | world | church
I’ve spent much of my working life in or around education. I worked for an education charity, I trained to teach and taught in secondary schools, I ran training courses and designed award-winning global graduate programmes, I was a pedagogic expert at a University and now manage quality assurance in a small corner of another.… Continue reading On Education
Men don’t know how to be friends anymore. Have you noticed? Ancient literature expected men to have close friends, who could bitterly betray them if they proved false and be the close loves of their hearts when they proved true. We could think of Achilles and Patroclus, Damon and Pythias, or for an example that… Continue reading Reclaiming Friendship
We live in an age of expressive individualism. This is a bad thing. While any sort of individualism is a product of Christianity, the form of individualism we currently have that places my desires squarely at the top of the hierarchy of goods is deeply destructive to society, to individuals, and to the church. Once… Continue reading 5 Antidotes to individualism
We live in an age of individuals. Which doesn’t sound like it’s saying very much because we can’t imagine anything else. For all the philosophers and critics say we are 'expressive individualists', we might not believe it fully. You’re not so self-centred that you only act for yourself, after all? But we’re so inculcated by… Continue reading Individualism goes deep
The traditional Protestant answer to the question “what makes a church” is the preaching of the Word and the Sacraments. Most Protestant denominations have adhered to it to some extent or other, though you would be hard-pressed to see this in action in my low-church charismatic circles. We disregard the sacraments. The reformers and their… Continue reading What makes a church?
Our American cousins are insane. This isn’t news, we’ve known that since they threw off the pleasant yoke of our tyrannical monarchs and forged out on their own with the bizarre notion of forming a nation around an idea. It’ll never catch on. I suspect they feel much the same way about us. We are,… Continue reading Political Sins
I was speaking to my friend Duncan and he suggested a startling thought: we want our discipleship to be gamified. On the face of it I could shrug it off, Duncan and I are millennials, gamification is a Gen Z problem. They’re the generation that sees progress in terms of levelling up. We’re the I’m… Continue reading Next Level Discipleship
I was mist-coating a wall the other day; Helen was plastering a ceiling. A fairly standard Saturday in the Suffield household. We had some worship music on, which probably isn’t our norm for a hard work renovation day, but a change is as good as a rest. A song came on and the lyrics caught… Continue reading A ballad of breaking idols
In my day job I like metrics. I’ve got a bit of a reputation for it. In a certain meeting I’ve uttered the phrase “that’s not a metric” often enough that some people look and wait for me to say it whenever a way of measuring success is suggested. In most of the jobs I’ve… Continue reading Measuring Success
For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.1 Thessalonians 2:11–12 I am not a man naturally given to encouragement. If you were being polite… Continue reading On Encouragement
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