word | spirit | world | church
Churches should embrace the life of God in the Spirit in all its fullness. That means both charismatic spiritual life and the sacramental life of the gathered church. ‘Eucharismatic’ is a term coined by Andrew Wilson in his excellent book Spirit and Sacrament, a portmanteau of eucharistic and charismatic. His book lays out his thesis, but… Continue reading Being Eucharismatic
It’s a dreary winter Saturday. Frost has limned the limbs of trees with a stark outline against the grey sky. The house is slow and lazy as we sleep and read and emerge into the world. A small bowl of hastily made dough has been waiting overnight, doubling in size as it prepares itself for… Continue reading The Story of Bread
A few weeks ago, I taught a session that I called ‘Understanding the Cross’ at my church. We went through some of what sin is and what crucifixion was like and the Old Testament sacrificial system. In the second half we looked at passages of the Bible to find out what happened theologically on or… Continue reading 12 things that happen on the Cross
As is mine. That’s how faith works. We all have hand-me-down faith. Sometimes I hear people talk as though faith that someone else gave you is somehow worse than faith that you found for yourself. I think that’s a mistake. I just had the privilege of watching eight baptisms and heard eight stories of people’s… Continue reading Your Faith is Secondhand
Have you ever considered what you eat and how you eat it from a theological angle? It’s a conviction of mine that everything is theological, and that God’s people can speak to all of life with his word and reflection. There’s nothing that the Bible doesn’t speak to, for all we must admit that some… Continue reading A Brief Theology of Food
Christians are supposed to be the wise. I often wonder if we really are. While my own preaching and teaching, as well as that of others I know well or have sat under, contains a lot of practical application, I am beginning to suspect that I haven’t spent a lot of time teaching about wisdom… Continue reading Repost: Get Wisdom
We all know how the world should be run. It’s simply obvious to us: the best people should run things, and everyone should get what they deserve. If you put that to 100 people, I suspect you would find the vast majority would agree that this an innately good idea. They call it a meritocracy—a… Continue reading God is a Giver
Grace is the currency of Christianity, its heart and soul. Without grace, you have a religion that demands you follow God wholeheartedly and declares that you cannot. With grace? A freely given bounty that never runs out. Christianity is grace. What we mean by that is that the heart of the faith is that God… Continue reading Grace is not a thing
There’s a principle in the Bible that’s foreign to our Protestant intuitions. When the people of Israel were dramatically saved by the Lord, they built a monument. Or at least, sometimes they did. The two famous examples would be at Gilgal in Joshua 4 or at Ebenezer in 1 Samuel 7. In Joshua 4 the… Continue reading A monument of gift
It’s been 10 months since we had church. We’re in our third so-called Lockdown (it’s our second formal national lockdown) and for much of the time in between we’ve been in local lockdowns or had significant restrictions on our daily lives. At no point since March has life returned to anything I would recognise as… Continue reading Longing in Lockdown
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