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Of blue parakeets and Bibles
I’ve just finished Scot McKnight’s book, The Blue Parakeet and have thoroughly enjoyed it, both as a challenge and an affirmation. His basic premise is that we all read the Bible with our own bias and preconceptions – and we should all be honest about that. Nothing new there really – except perhaps the call…
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The Nativity
There’s been plenty of chat on Facebook and on blogs about the new dramatisation of the nativity on the BBC. I’ve seen the first two and have been pleasantly surprised. Obviously it’s highly speculative, but in seeking to tell the human story behind the events so well-known to Christians, it has, I think, brought a…
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The problem of words
As someone whose job is ‘words’ it should mean that I am more careful than many about how they are used and, indeed, which ones I use. I can get very picky about words – especially theological ones. I dislike ‘sloppy’ words which get one into a fankle when speaking of God. I dislike inaccurate…
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Endings and beginnings
Yesterday marked the last day of my final candidates’ conference: today marks the beginning of probation. Endings and new beginnings are, I suppose, the very marks of a Christian’s story. That grand meta-narrative of scripture is a cycle of endings and new beginnings; enslavement and redemption, death and resurrection.
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Crisis!? What crisis?
Last night, BBC Scotland aired a short documentary, A Church in Crisis?, about the Church of Scotland and its current circumstances. The broadcast date marks the anniversary of the Kirk’s creation following the Scottish Reformation. Peter has already blogged about the programme and notes that it offered a balanced view of the Kirk’s present state.…
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How to be a clone
In a stroke of good luck (sorry, blessing), Michael Patton published a list of rules all new Christians must follow. It is a very useful follow-up on my post on Christian clones. (And, yes, it is tongue-in-cheek – I think).
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Christian clones
In that amazing way that only seems to come through a sense of God at work by the Spirit, there was a consistent theme running through much of the activity and challenge on the recent trip to Geneva. (Although I suspect that the lecturers who organised the trip would like to claim that that was…
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This is not a public discussion (honest)
In the spirit of not making any public statements, but encouraging discussion and understanding of the subject which cannot be named (why do I feel like we’re in a Harry Potter story?) I would like to point to some good and thought-provoking articles which were themselves pointed to in JohnFH‘s blog which I sometimes dip…
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Not just a…
Glancing through my blog feeds this morning, this entry at [hold this space] caught my eye. It’s a timely reminder for those in the Church of Scotland that we should not define people by labels. Only we do. The ‘issue which shall not be named’ so often descends into just that. OK, I’ll name it…