"to the praise of his glorious grace" (Eph 1:6)
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is…
Earlier on I read an interesting interview with Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism website. (The interview itself is behind a paywall but you can register with the Times to get free access to a limited number of articles per month). The interview itself is pretty shocking: What I do not recognise from…
I’ve noticed that a lot of people where I live are into mediums. The local community centre runs a regular (or semi-regular) night with a medium coming in. Not long ago I saw a ‘psychic fair’ being advertised. I’ve seen friends on Facebook keen to have palm readings and other things – some of whom…
I have once more done a Christmas Message in the form of a video. This time it’s more or less the same as what I will be saying in one of our Christmas Eve services, except the video is a bit expanded. See last year’s Christmas Message here.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about evangelism and the challenges that the church faces at the moment. We live in days when most people know next to nothing about the Christian faith, and next to nothing about godly living and morality. People don’t know the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, people have no understanding…
I’ve long been intrigued by the episode in the gospels where Jesus is called by a synagogue leader called Jairus to heal his sick daughter. On the way he meets another woman – a woman who doesn’t even speak to him, but simply touches his cloak and is healed. The whole episode is fascinating –…
Justin Welby has been in the news recently for speaking out about politics. Notably, he called for higher taxes to tackle an ‘unjust economy’. He’s garnered quite a lot of criticism for speaking out in this way, and has written an article defending speaking out publicly. Others have written about this more eloquently and wisely…
For the first few hundred years of the church’s history the big debate within the church was the nature of Jesus Christ – who, exactly, was he in relation to God? This is where the doctrine of the Trinity came from – as theologians debated and discussed God’s revelation of himself in the Bible. Similar…
Every so often I record a short ‘thought’ for the Tendring Talking Times. My previous thought is available here. There is a huge amount of division in society at the moment. The biggest culprit is of course Brexit – friends have fallen out with each other over this one. I personally have lost friends over…
I had a little epiphany last night. I don’t usually have epiphanies – they’re pretty rare for me to be honest – but last night I genuinely saw something which I hadn’t before. It’s probably because I am slow and dense, but still – an epiphany is an epiphany. It happened in my home group….