word | spirit | world | church
I’m towards the end (he says, hopefully) of a research degree. It’s Masters level rather than a terminal degree, but nevertheless requires true academic research. I’ve found adapting to it an uphill struggle. Most of the forms of writing I’ve trained myself in—the sermon, the blog post, and the article—are foreign to the academic world.… Continue reading Research and Pastoring
It’s common in evangelical circles for people to talk about ‘going to heaven when they die.’ It’s common in slightly different evangelical circles to politely scoff at that phrase and remind people that the great hope of the Christian faith is the resurrection of the body. The scoffing isn’t particularly helpful, neither is NT Wright’s… Continue reading Resurrection and the theology of the body
I suspect most of my readers won’t need convincing that ‘leaders are readers’ and that Pastors, whether paid or not, should be devoting some of their time to reading books that encourage their souls and to books that sharpen their minds. Evidently, those who are paid so that they don’t have to work should be… Continue reading Why Pastors should read fiction
This will initially seem like an odd claim to make, and a particularly odd claim to read on your phone, the most disembodying and dislocating device you own. Wisdom doesn’t feel embodied, wisdom is about ideas, surely? Ideas are immaterial if anything is, right? Your body isn’t relevant to things that we think, or so… Continue reading Wisdom is Embodied
We need to make distinctions. Is England a ‘Christian Nation?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, it really depends what you mean by the question. There are reasonable definitions of ‘Christian Nation’ where England, and the UK, or one of the two, fit it, and there are reasonable definitions where they do not. This post is my attempt to… Continue reading Is England a Christian Nation?
I am pro ‘symbolic’ reading of the Bible. This goes by a few different names, which aren’t entirely contiguous with each other: typology, spiritual reading, the four senses, allegory, maximalism, and more. These things aren’t the same, and they might not all even really be the same neck of the woods, but they are all… Continue reading Bad symbolic reading
You carry in your pocket a whole world. That hand-sized brick of black glass is a window to anything and everything that there is. You could find out what is known publicly about anyone you meet. You could learn from someone else how they think you should complete any tasks you’re about to do. You… Continue reading The World in your Pocket
We read the Bible in two directions, horizontally and vertically. Or, because I really like the word, we read the Bible orthogonally. I’m using some of the language here of Michael Niebauer, who argues for these two angles of reading, horizontal and vertical. I depart from him in the below to some extent, but I’m… Continue reading Orthogonal Reading
If you want to mature, you’re going to have to suffer. Actually, that’s not quite right. You are going to suffer, that’s the nature of life under the sun. Some of that will be petty, some of it will be serious, and (heaven-forfend) some of it will be so psychologically scarring that you’ll be getting… Continue reading Maturity Will Hurt
Evangelicals love magic. On the face of it that doesn’t sound like a true statement, perhaps you remember the mild panic over Harry Potter in the early 2000s, or the much bigger panic over Dungeons and Dragons in the eighties—witchcraft remains something we are inherently nervous about, sometimes leading to absurd extremes. Which is true… Continue reading Magical Thinking
nuakh 