word | spirit | world | church
We live in a world of constant connection. We carry with us little black glass ‘communication’ devices that mean we’re connected at all times; there is no situation in which we can’t be reached or distracted or bothered by an economy built on attention. We’ve all been there: you’re having a deep conversation with a… Continue reading Constant Connection
There’s a particular feature of my generation—Millennials—which makes faithfulness to the gospel harder than it needs to be, and makes disappointment with how our lives progress much more likely. I was born in the 1980s, and grew up in 1990s Southampton, which meant that in Christian circles Delirious? (or occasionally Deliriou5?) were local heroes. Many… Continue reading Expecting the Extraordinary
A while back I was sat talking with a group of young Christians who would fit within what’s commonly called, ‘Gen Z,’ and one of them turned to me and said that the greatest issue facing her generation of believers was the proliferation of sources of authority. Which is quite a claim, I don’t think… Continue reading Youtubeification
We live in a digital world, or at least so it seems at times. We are surrounded by virtual places and technology that has inserted itself into our lives—for good and for ill. In this rapidly changing world, we have to learn what it looks like to follow Jesus. In lots of ways, it is… Continue reading Digital Discipleship
An inflammatory title! That’s bound to get the punters in. A friend of mine said this line to me a few weeks back. It was a few days before her wedding, and I wouldn’t want to speak to her emotional state but, well, she told me that Instagram was the devil. Except I think we… Continue reading Instagram is the devil
If we believe James K. A. Smith’s work in his Cultural Liturgies trilogy, then we are constantly being formed by everything around us and the ‘liturgies’ that they tell us. Everything from shopping centres to televisions to motorways are influencing the way that we view the world. While I think Smith’s solutions are helpful but… Continue reading The liturgy of social media
Back in the summer of 2019 I spent a few months reading everything I could find on Generation Z. I think I’m not exaggerating to say I read every scholarly paper I could access through my University, and every book on the subject in its libraries. I wrote a paper for my network of churches,… Continue reading Generation Z
We like justice. Our nation cries for it, our discourse is all about it, and Generation Z in particular perceive justice as the highest good. The Bible doesn’t disagree. Justice is good, and God is Just. In fact, justice is fundamentally good news. There is a day coming when all the evil in the world… Continue reading Justice starts here
It was sat at a table in the University Starbucks that some of the things I’d read over the last few years about apologetics and Gen Z became real and urgent. I was having lunch with a student who had been around our church for a while. He had come along to my Life Group… Continue reading Useful and True
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