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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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…
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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.…
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Comments closed
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,…
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Review: The Atheist Who Didn't Exist
I’ve just finished reading “The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist” by Andy Bannister. The book is subtitled “or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments”, and that’s a pretty good summary of the book: examining various arguments made by writers such as Richard Dawkins (who else?) and the like to see whether they stand up. The point…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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Happy Christmas!
Happy Christmas to one and all! I’m sorry for being a bit light on the blogging front this year, but thank you everyone for engaging. I’ve just returned from our candlelit carols service, and we looked at the difference between Santa and Jesus. At the end of the service we had this reading, which I’ll…