word | spirit | world | church
I currently have three quotes on the wall in my study at the church building. I suspect that this will change with time, but each phrase is a reminder to me and I hope will shape my ministry over the next few years. None of them is from the Bible, which perhaps itself is surprising.… Continue reading 3 phrases to live by
The ‘problem of evil’ is a philosophical way of framing a challenge that every Christian and everyone who has considered Jesus’ claims knows intimately. The ‘problem’ is simply, if God is good, if God is all-powerful, and if evil exists, one of those three premises must be false. We know the challenge more simply in… Continue reading Six Ways that Christianity answers the Problem of Evil
Christian Formation IV Our formation involves our minds, freeing them from sin and growing in knowledge of God, and our lives—learning habits and being embedded in Christian community—but it also involves our hearts. To grow to be like Christ is to gradually change our loves, to war for them, so that we love God above… Continue reading The Matter of the Heart
I’ve been blogging around Matthew Lee Anderson’s Called into Questions over the last few months. It’s a great book, though difficult, that Pastors should give some extended reflection to. We turn at the end to God’s questions. Anderson comments: “Hearing God’s questions is the cost of our freedom to question God.” Called into Questions, 23.… Continue reading God’s Questions
The UK church is having a difficult moment. It feels, if you’ll allow me to slip into a prophetic mode I don’t usually use in my writing, like everything is being shaken. Some of this is the aftermath of Covid. It was an apocalyptic moment for many. We have increasing numbers of churches who need… Continue reading Ex Opere Operato and the Abuse Crisis
Jesus tells us to render to Caesar what is Caesar's (Mark 12), what bears his image, meaning coinage; he continues that we should render to God what is God’s, what bears God’s image, meaning us. Our whole selves are supposed to be offered to God, such that the offering of my self to God becomes… Continue reading An Order of Loves
Do we have free will? It’s one of those perennial philosophical questions which we would rather not engage with—either because it seems self-evident that we do and therefore the question is a nonsense like enquiring if cats meow, or because we’re slightly concerned the answer might be no and that the weight of that answer… Continue reading On Free Will
The Psalms have sharp edges. They cut the unwary and cut the bonds of the broken. I’ve just prayed my way through them, at roughly one a day. I’m starting again at the moment. I knew they were raw but have often been surprised by how raw. Which I really shouldn’t be, but my church… Continue reading The Hard-Edged Psalms
As I write this American Baptists are tearing each other apart over a complex set of ideologies and academic approaches collectively called “Critical Race Theory” and often abbreviated as CRT. By the time you read this—I am committed to the idea of cold takes—I would not be surprised if they were still devouring one another… Continue reading Plundering the Egyptians
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