word | spirit | world | church
The Church’s worship should include the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, with the gathered people of God eating and drinking Jesus’ body and blood together in order to receive from him. The Lord is the host who has laid the table for us. This is the plank of my eucharismatic manifesto which makes the charismatic… Continue reading A Eucharismatic Supper
Every member of the church is meant to participate in the church’s gathered worship, because the Bible insists that we do. Continuing my series on my Eucharismatic manifesto, I’d like to talk about the importance of what we might call ‘worship,’ but I’ve referred to as ‘prayer.’ I’ve deliberately shifted the language because I want… Continue reading Worshipping in Spirit
Jesus has three bodies, which is the sort of nonsense saying that gets Christians in trouble. No, I’m not suggesting some sort of Trinitarian confusion where either the Father and Spirit have bodies (they don’t) or that all three persons are Jesus (they’re not), but in some classical accounts Jesus has three bodies. The three… Continue reading The Three Bodies of Christ
We treat the Bible like it’s arbitrary. I think it’s important that we understand that it isn’t. Perhaps we read that the God declares a particular action to be a sin. We aren’t entirely clear what would be wrong with it—our friends and neighbours don’t think it’s bad—and so we decide to follow the Lord… Continue reading Explaining the Food Laws
The Christian life feels precarious, sometimes. Do you feel like that? We’ve all seen dear brothers and sisters who we thought were following Jesus wholeheartedly—and perhaps they were—disappear from the scene and seem to abandon their faith. Putting aside how we should read these occurrences it can make us feel like we’re one step away… Continue reading We Did Not Build the Fortress
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Dr Pepper asked us repeatedly—since I don’t like it, I always assumed that drinking it was punishment enough. They also printed this under the ingredients which is wonderfully self-aware marketing, if a little dark. Though, I read that this was not their slogan outside of the UK, so perhaps… Continue reading Taking the Long View
When Aesop, busy imagining tortoises volunteering for foot races, said “in union there is strength” he was acknowledging a truth that we all recognise. Like O2 used to tell us when trying to flog phone contracts, we’re better connected. That’s easy enough to say, but when it comes to doing something about it we swiftly… Continue reading United
A couple of weeks ago we were at a wedding. We were invited to the evening but not the reception, so we’d brought a few sausage rolls and a pack of crisps for lunch and went looking for somewhere to eat it before we went on to the afternoon activities we’d planned—exploring the Cotswolds in… Continue reading Burial is Hopeful
You’d be forgiven for thinking I was speaking of January, named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces to look forwards and backwards in the year. Rather, Advent—the first season of the Christian year—has two faces. One face is a face of joy, the face we associate with our Christmas traditions, with chocolate… Continue reading The Month with Two Faces
Our home has a beautiful garden—it’s a large part of why we bought the tumble-down shell we’ve lovingly formed into something beautiful. We live in a large city, so its 45-metre-long stretch is quite something. It brings my wife much joy. In the early days of living here, when we had one finished room, barely… Continue reading One sows, another reaps
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