word | spirit | world | church
An easy question you would think, and it probably should be. I’ve seen it treated very vaguely very often though, there’s a depth and complexity here which people like to skate over the surface of. Jesus is baptised (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3) with John’s baptism which is clearly stated to be a baptism… Continue reading Why was Jesus baptised?
The Bible is music. Or so Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson claim in the introduction to their superb Echoes of Exodus. I don’t know a lot about classical music, but the crux of the point is that we see various themes in the scriptures, and they are picked up and repeated by repeating stories or… Continue reading Repost: The Bible is Music
Our world is made of atoms, of spinning particles of energy careering around one another in a fabulously chaotic and surprisingly ordered way. Or so the story goes. I don’t mean to suggest that I doubt the scientists whose work informs our understanding of physics and matter; I have no reason to do so. What… Continue reading Repost: We Are Made of Stories
I was recently reading this fascinating article in Plough Magazine about intergenerational stewardship. I first heard about it while eating tapas with the editor, because apparently that’s my life now. Anyway, to the article: all well and good you might think, as long as you’re a German Prince with land that stretches back generations in… Continue reading Stewarding Stories
I’m the sort of person who spots patterns and thinks in patterns. That’s not by itself better or worse than someone who thinks in a different way (or doesn’t have a typology for how they think—which is the hallmark of a pattern-person), it’s just a thing. It has strengths: I can see that these three… Continue reading Seeing Patterns
I suspect most of us give little thought to time. It’s simply something we move through, or exist in, or bemoan the passing of as the years slowly strip away the vigour of our youth. The fact that what time is amounts to a philosophical question that is notoriously tricky and nevertheless vital to any… Continue reading 5 Theses on Time
We live in a world that tells a story about itself: we learn the story as children in school and we imbibe it in our cups as we go about the day. It’s whispered to us by automobiles and tarmac and concrete pillars and we receive it intravenously by the tap our smartphones have placed… Continue reading Individualism in the Machine
The modern story is one of autonomy: the path to human flourishing will be found in being most myself. I will achieve actualisation if I am my most authentic self, whoever that proves to be. At its very simplest it boils down to the Disney princess mantra, we follow our hearts. If that ruffles a… Continue reading Against Autonomy
There’s a common story people tell at Christmas time, not the one on which the world turns, or the one about the chimney-diving elf, but one about how all the traditions we use to celebrate the birth of Christ are actually pagan in origin. This varies in intensity, but these killjoys are keen to make… Continue reading On Christmas Trees
I wrote a few months back about our preoccupation with the need to be extraordinary. It’s, particularly for my generation, a problem in ministry. It can play havoc with leadership, undermine the ordinary means of grace, and mean that we miss what we’re aiming for. To take preaching as an example, I am convinced that… Continue reading Ministry with an Extraordinary God
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