Phill Sacre

Category: Site News

News about the website. Most of you will probably want to ignore this category!

  • If you’re new here…

    If you’re new here…

    Hi everyone, welcome to my website! This is a central hub for everything related to me on the internet.

    I am a church pastor and educator: I lead a house church, and I also create videos to help teach the Christian faith. I also have a podcast where I talk about what’s going on in the world from a Christian perspective.

    These days I tend to write on Substack (which is also where the podcast is based), so if you want to keep up with writing please do subscribe there. This blog will remain available as an archive. I started blogging back in 2003, so I have over 2,000 posts worth of content. Admittedly most of it in the early days was just a boring diary of what was going on in my own life, but then what else is blogging for?!…

    Do feel free to get in touch if you’d like to. God bless, and I hope I see you again soon!

    Update August 2025: I am not on ANY social media platforms. My Facebook and Instagram accounts were closed last year, and I have just closed my X account as well.

  • Moving to substack…

    Moving to substack…

    If you’re a regular listener to the podcast, you’ll know that over the last few weeks I have been on a mission to become less dependent on Big Tech. I’ve decided that one way of doing that would be to migrate the Sacred Musings podcast away from YouTube and to Substack. I’ve seen a few other people doing podcasts via Substack, and I think it might work.

    This is partly because, as I keep saying on the podcast, YouTube are definitely doing something strange with subscribers to Sacred Musings. I suspect I will never get anywhere on YouTube. I also think it’s affecting Understand the Bible – I discovered the other day that if you search for ‘Understand the Bible’, my channel comes waaaaay down. (Below several other channels called ‘Understand the Bible’, all with fewer subscribers).

    I will also publish some written pieces on Substack, as I do here. If you’d like an explanation as to why, I’ve written my first Substack, All aboard the substack bandwagon:

    I don’t know about you, but whenever I see someone has started up a new Substack I tend to roll my eyes and think “oh great, there’s another one.” Substack has become like a blog in the early 2000s – everyone (and their pets) seem to have one. So, why have I decided to create one?


    If you’re a listener to the audio podcast, you shouldn’t need to do anything. If you’re a subscriber on YouTube, please do subscribe to my Substack – I haven’t quite worked all the details out yet, but if you subscribe there you’ll be notified as and when I do update.

    Thank you for bearing with me during these changes, I’m trying to work out the best way of moving forward! What I need to do now is find an alternative platform for Understand the Bible, but all in good time…

  • Website: new look!

    Website: new look!

    I have redesigned my website – which I’m sure the observant among you will notice. (If you are, indeed, reading this on my website). I felt that the previous design had become more than a little stale. Not to mention it felt amateurish – which is not surprising, given that it was designed by Yours Truly.

    I hope this new design looks and feels a bit more professional, as well as being easy to use. I’ve streamlined things a little bit on the front page. The only problem is that the embedded videos seem to have gone into hiding. The only way I’ve found to fix it is to go into each post and edit them individually – and, to be honest, I don’t want to do that for all the video posts I’ve accumulated!

    Anyway, I hope that you like it – let me know if you have any thoughts in the comments below.

  • Welcome! A brief intro…

    Hi everyone. Welcome if you’re new here! This blog contains a mix of written and video content – lately the content has been video (see Sacred Musings) rather than written content, although I will continue to write from time to time. If you’d prefer to just see written content, there’s a box at the top of the front page which will let you hide the video content.

    The strapline here is “making sense of the world from a Christian perspective”, and that’s what I’m trying to do: analysing where we are, how we can understand what’s going on, looking at the Bible. I’ve focussed a lot on the lockdowns lately, but I aim to cover all sorts of things going on.

    I recorded the video below a few months ago to explain my thinking and why I’m creating videos, which you might like to watch. I have also written a defence of why Sacred Musings is “political”. If you’re interested, I’ve also got a few more bits about me on the About page.

    If you appreciate what I do and would like to support me, you can Buy me a Coffee or check out the support page. Thanks so much.

  • Same site, different look

    Hi folks, just to let you know that I’ve updated the appearance of this website. I was having difficulty finding a theme I like. WordPress is great, but one of the problems is it seems themes are getting more and more complicated. I wanted something which was just simple and straightforward!

    So, for the first time in ten years or more, I’ve made my own. I hope you like it – or at least, it isn’t too bad. (I’m not really a designer, so that’s as much as I can hope for).

    It’s funny looking back over the history of this site: it started back in about 2003 as a bit of fun while I was a student. Then for a long time it was just a record of the things I was up to – a sort of online diary. Over time it’s gradually transitioned into a place where I can write a bit more seriously about what’s going on in the world. And over the last month or so I’ve started vlogging, which is really a new thing for me!

    So, there you go. I hope it’s … OK.

  • Making Sense of 2020

    Making Sense of 2020

    I’ve been blogging here for a long time – nearly 20 years, in fact! Over the last few years, as the world has changed, I’ve started to post up more about working out what’s going on in the world. Especially from a Christian perspective (as you’d expect). 2020 has been a crazy kind of a year – it feels to me as if the world has quite literally gone mad.

    As I’ve got a bit more into “vlogging”, I’ve decided to do that more and I made a short video introducing my thoughts. (I’m still new to the whole thing so I apologise if it’s a bit shaky!)

    All the videos will be posted here as well – but if you’re into YouTube why don’t you pop on over there and subscribe?

    I won’t be moving entirely to video though, I will continue writing and blogging in the more traditional style. It’s very early days so let’s see how it goes!

  • Videos & the blog – update

    I’ve just uploaded the last in my series on “How to grow as a Christian” – looking at the cross from Mark’s gospel.

    I apologise that my blog has become even more neglected over the last month, but I have been uploading videos weekly.
    If you want to follow these videos, the best thing is to subscribe to my channel there (click the Subscribe button on that page). You can also subscribe on Facebook, but I tend to find Facebook a bit more unreliable for showing you new content.
    I will try to get a mailing list set up with new videos as that is probably the safest way! But the best bet for now is to subscribe on YouTube.
    I’m not going to close the blog, but I just wanted to explain where I am while I’m not here…

  • Comments closed

    What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!I’ve made the decision to close comments on this blog. This decision has been coming for a long time now, but my previous post finally decided me. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
    The reason is mainly because I am no longer convinced that comments on blogs really achieve anything. In fact, I’d go further than that – I’d go as far as to say that debate on the internet is, around 99.9% of the time, utterly futile. I’ve been involved in debating things on the internet for many years now, and I’m struggling to think of a single time where anyone has changed their mind on an important issue as a result of these debates. I’m sure it does happen, but it’s depressingly rare.
    On this blog over the years, I’ve written on topics which have generated a fair amount of discussion – the two big ones being atheism/secularism and same-sex marriage. Those two topics have drawn a lot of comments, mostly from the same regular commenters. What has happened, pretty much, is that our arguments have got to the point where you could almost script them. Sometimes I feel like it’s become a bit like Monty Python’s argument clinic!
    Over the past couple of years, since being ordained and becoming a curate, I’ve become increasingly convinced of the importance of the local. My calling is first and foremost to the people who I actually live among and minister to. And, once again, I’ve become increasingly convinced that discussing things online is actually a distraction from what I’m supposed to do. I’ve invested a lot of time in discussing things here over the years, and I simply don’t think that use of my time is now justifiable.
    Dialogue over important issues such as religion and atheism is possible – but it’s only ever likely to happen within the context of an actual relationship. The internet is, quite frankly, too impersonal and too prone to misunderstanding. You can’t really show love to a random stranger on the internet, not in the same way that you can show love to someone who is in your geographical area. I’m no longer interested in debating Christianity simply for the sake of being right. It’s better to show people living here what difference being a follower of Christ actually makes – something which, again, it is difficult to do on the internet. The internet actually makes proper discussion incredibly hard – you miss important things like nonverbal communication, you can become focussed on a very abstract argument and lose sight of the person.
    So, from now on, I’m going to take the approach that blogger Tim Challies has taken (and probably others): instead of a comments section, if someone feels strongly enough about a post to write about it they can send a ‘letter to the editor’ (i.e. email me). Any which are helpful and constructive will be published.
    Many thanks to all those who have commented and contributed here over the years, but for the foreseeable future there will be no more comments.

  • All quiet on the blogging front

    Just wanted to apologise here for how quiet it’s been here recently. Starting my new role as the curate here, moving house, and having a daughter who’s just turned one continues to take up the vast majority of my time! I do have thoughts about things I can blog about, but most of the time I simply don’t have the time to follow through with them.

    Anyway, in the short term I will be blogging a fair bit less but I do plan to return to blogging more regularly as soon as I am able (whenever that may be)… and I will post from time to time on various subjects!

  • Before the Storm…

    The last three weekends have been pretty busy for us – we’ve been up in Colchester (or thereabouts) for various reasons! We had a great time seeing friends and family and generally catching up with people.

    However, as of yesterday Mrs Phil is 37 weeks pregnant – which means that, if the baby is born any time from now on, it will be considered full term. We have now acquired everything we need for the baby (thanks in large part to the generosity of friends) – just one or two non-essentials we need to get for the hospital bag and we’re all set. It’s a weird feeling to say to people “the next time we see you… we’ll have a baby!”

    Add to this the fact that the first term of my final year at Oak Hill starts next week, and you’ll understand that I may not have very much time for blogging in the coming weeks and months!

    So this is an advance warning that things may get pretty quiet around here for a while, but for good reasons 🙂 I’ll at least try to post up when the baby is born and occasional progress updates, with maybe something more controversial now and then…