Christian
-
Hymnology: The greatest day in history
At Easter time, one of the things I often wonder is why we (and, I should say, I’m very much preaching to myself here) spend so much of the year more or less ignoring the resurrection. We talk about the cross an awful lot of the time, but often we don’t talk so much about
-
Messy Church (2): Some follow-up thoughts
My previous post on Messy Church generated a fair bit of interest and comment (on Facebook – unfortunately comments here remain closed). I thought it would be good to try and close out the matter with some clarifying comments.So, here goes: 1. A lot of good stuff happens at Messy Church. I didn’t make this clear in
-
Thinking about Messy Church…
I’ve been thinking a little bit about church planting recently – more on that some other time. Anyway, in my conversations about it, the idea of Messy Church has come up more than once. If you’ve not been to Messy Church and don’t know what it’s about, there’s plenty of information on the official website.
-
Hymnology: By Faith we see the hand of God
February here at St Mark’s is ‘all-request’ month. People have the opportunity to request a favourite hymn or a song, and we’ll sing them at services throughout the month. My request for the month was “By Faith” by Townend and Getty. This is a song which is particularly inspired by the famous chapter 11 of Hebrews,
-
Transgender and the new reality
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof
-
Hymnology: And can it be – ‘My chains fell off…’
Last weekend I travelled down to High Leigh for a residential weekend with my fellow curates in the Chelmsford Diocese. On Friday evening we sang ‘And can it be’, one of my favourite hymns and one of Charles Wesley’s finest (in my opinion). The hymn tells the story of salvation from a first person perspective
-
Hymnology: In Christ Alone and the wrath of God
As I said in my introductory post, I’m starting up a new blog series about hymns and their theology (which I’ve called ‘hymnology’. Great name, right?). I thought it would be appropriate to kick off the series by thinking about one of the most well-loved modern hymns, ‘In Christ Alone’ by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty.
-
New blog project: Hymnology
I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog a little of late. Part of it has been the fact that the last term was quite busy (for some reason I always find the Autumn term the busiest one of the year), but part of it is that I haven’t really felt compelled to write about
-
Confused by 'I, the Lord of sea and sky'
Just the other day, someone was saying to me how much they love the song “I, the Lord of sea and sky” – it’s one of their all-time favourite hymns. I remember once visiting a church to have a look around, and they were holding a “hymn request” month – people could write their favourite
-
Bigotry and legalism in our culture
Three years ago, I lamented the use of the word “bigot” especially in the context of same-sex marriage. In the last week or so, I’ve read a couple of other things which have really said what I wanted to say much better. Firstly, Brendan O’Neill writes about “The New Bigots” as he considers the treatment