Category: Christian
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A few thoughts about safeguarding
A couple of days ago, the organisation ThirtyOne:Eight released their review into what happened at Emmanuel Church Wimbledon and Jonathan Fletcher (see the report from the Independent Advisory Group for a shorter summary). This follows hard on the heels of the full report about Ravi Zacharias which was only released just over a month ago.…
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Why has God taken our songs away?
Over the last 12 months during the pandemic, government guidance has prevented many churches from singing. Why has God allowed this to happen? In this short video we look at Psalm 95 to help us understand. Key points In the video I take a very brief look at Psalm 95. Verses 1-2 tell us to…
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Have we focussed too much on apologetics?
I see a lot of apologetics videos on YouTube, defending Christianity against progressive Christians or atheists etc. By focussing on this kind of content, I think we might be missing something important. I decided to try another video post because it seemed to work quite well last time. I’m beginning to find it more natural…
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Are men the problem?
I’ve been thinking a lot about our response to Sarah Everard. One thing which really worries me is the way it pits men and women against one another. For once, I’ve actually tried to do a vlog about this rather than a written post. Over the last few months I’ve begun to feel it’s easier…
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Me on Irreverend
After my last couple of articles about Experts (this one and this one), the good chaps over at the Irreverend Podcast invited me to chat with them. We had a really good discussion – it’s quite long (about 90 minutes), but I think we covered some really interesting ground. It was a helpful conversation for…
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On experts and being too optimistic
A few days ago, the Irreverend Podcast discussed my previous article about lockdown and the end of “experts”. I enjoyed the episode and I thought the discussion was helpful. It’s nice to find like-minded clergy who don’t buy into the typical Guardian worldview! Anyway, the conversation did provoke me to think about what I wrote…
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Will Lockdown be the end of “experts”?
A few years ago Michael Gove made his infamous statement: “people in this country have had enough of experts”. At the time I think I found it vaguely amusing – at the time, there were a lot of experts who had been weighing in about the EU. But over the last few months it’s come…
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Schaeffer on 2021
“How could a book written 50 years ago so accurately make sense of what’s happening today?” Those were my thoughts as I read Francis Schaeffer’s book The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century. I’ve mentioned Francis Schaeffer a few times lately – I’ve discovered his writings over the last couple of years, and…
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What Conservative Evangelicals get wrong about preaching
I have spent pretty much my entire life going to evangelical churches. These are churches where the sermon is often the ‘main event’ in a service. This was especially true in the church I attended before going to theological college. There, a very high value was placed on having “good” preaching – it was really…
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Reflections on passing 100,000: Grief and Anger
Recently the UK passed a pretty grim milestone: we went over 100,000 covid deaths. The UK has one of the worst death rates in the world – according to Worldometer, we are currently number five on the list (if you sort by deaths per million population). The two most common reactions I’ve seen have been…