Welcome to my website
I am a pastor and Christian educator.

In a nutshell, this is what I do…
Understand the Bible
My online ministry focussed on creating videos and songs to teach the Bible and the Christian faith.
The Bible Uncancelled
A short, weekday thought from the Bible published on video or podcast.
This Blog
I only write occasionally here now, as my attention is focussed on the two things I mention above. However, there is an archive of over 2,000 posts which I’ve made over the last 20+ years, these posts are all still accessible.
Latest Posts
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What it means to follow Jesus: Sermon on Mark 8:31-38
This is the text of a sermon I preached yesterday morning at at the 9:00 communion service at St Thomas’ Kidsgrove. It was the last day of their ‘week of events’ or mission which I mentioned in my post last week. (The week went well, by the way, thanks for asking.) The passage is Mark…
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Atheist Delusions: The Review
Recently I mentioned that I was reading through “Atheist Delusions” by David Bentley Hart, and I said I would write up a review of it when I’d finished reading it. Well, I’ve finished reading it now, and really enjoyed it. Quite a lot of the book deals with the same kind of things I’ve been…
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Easter Break
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the term system at Oak Hill is a bit strange. Last week was the final week of this half of the third term… we’ve got six more weeks after Easter, then exams, then that’s it for the year. Three weeks into the new term and I’m beginning to…
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New Scientist: “The God Issue”
Yesterday Mrs Phil bought me a copy of the latest New Scientist magazine, “The God Issue”, because it looked interesting. I’ve had a chance to read through it now – or at least the relevant articles – and I thought I’d post up a quick review. Know Your Enemy The introduction, ‘Know your enemy’, starts…
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Need… Caffeine…
We’re a few weeks into lent, and I’m … just over a week into my caffeine fast. Well, tea and coffee drinking fast. Well, tea and coffee with caffeine in drinking fast. But it doesn’t really sound as good if you say that. I did this once before, a few years ago (although strangely enough,…
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Gay Marriage and other lighthearted topics
Honestly. It feels like the news has gone a bit crazy recently, what with the ASA ruling that God cannot heal people, then the whole fracas about ‘militant secularism’, and now this: people going a bit crazy over whether the definition of marriage should be changed to include same-sex marriages. It seemed to kick off…
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Spring is Coming
Spring is Coming, a photo by phillsacre on Flickr. And now for something completely different: good news – spring is coming! See, look, daffodils! Taken at the weekend in our garden.
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Family Illness
A couple of weekends ago my parents came up to visit us. We had a cup of tea at our house, and then walked up to Oak Hill – which involves going up a relatively steep hill. My Mum struggled with this – she began to get quite breathless and had to make the return…
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Post-script to Secularism
My last post has generated a fair bit of controversy – I don’t think I’ve ever made a blog post which has attracted so many comments! I’d just like to write a very brief postscript to that with a link to a blog post about after-birth abortion: two doctors have written in the Journal of Medical…
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Secular Society: A Good Thing?
I’ve been thinking a bit about the whole ‘militant secularism’ thing recently. If you’ve missed what’s happened, you must have been living under a rock. Or, paying no attention to the news. Either way, there’s been a whole lotta bloggin’ going on about it! This is the news article which kicked it off, although also…

