Welcome to my website
Trying to see the world from a Christian perspective
This Blog
I only write occasionally here now, as you will see. However, there is an archive of over 2,000 posts which I’ve made over the last 20+ years, which are all still accessible.
Latest Posts
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Sacred DnB Podcast #15: “Lift Me Up”
I’ve decided to make my DJ / DnB Podcast an occasional podcast, rather than a regular monthly one. It’s just too much work to do it every week! I appreciate that the crossover of people who like DnB and the people who like the other stuff I do is probably quite small. But it’s too…
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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…
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Sacred DnB Podcast #14: “We wanna be free”
I have uploaded a new episode of the Sacred DnB Podcast. This will probably not interest about 99% of you, but for the one or two it does… (I’m posting this here because the podcast website has lapsed; I can’t maintain another site at the moment!)
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Being AT church is not BEING church
Can you remember LBL – Life Before Lockdown? (It’s a new acronym, I hope it’ll catch on). It feels like life has changed so much in the past year, it’s hard to remember what it was like before. My days were full of activities and meetings – taking a look back in my diary brings…
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Essex Covid Data: Quick update
My previous post about Essex covid data generated a bit of discussion. In particular, the key question seems to be: why do the hospital admissions seem to go up 7-14 days after the case numbers go up? It struck me yesterday that there’s a simple and straightforward answer: people who have symptoms get tested. In…
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Analysing Essex Covid Cases (Dec 20)
Over the last week or two, I’ve started tracking the covid cases in Essex. I’ve actually created a little data tracker where you can track cases and deaths across every region in Essex. (The data is taken from official ONS data and uses the most up-to-date data available). I created it because I was curious…