Category: Faith

  • 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…

  • Looking forward and back

    Once again, the time between blogs has got away from me and now that I try and think back over the last week or two, I struggle to find something that is blog-worthy. Blogging, I find, is often ‘of the moment’. Something happens, or makes a big enough impact, to trigger an urge to get…

  • 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…

  • Missing the obvious

    Sometimes I think I must be excruciatingly dim and I have to wonder why I ever felt I ought to respond to a call to ministry. I was reading a post on one of my favourite blogs earlier and came across these words: The entire trajectory of Scripture points to a kaleidoscopic people of God,…

  • Nuggets to ponder

    Many of the sessions at conference were worthy of note and I’ll probably be reflecting on some of them in due course. But here are some choice little nuggets from one session in particular. They’re probably somewhat paraphrased rather than accurate words and I offer no commentary, simply letting them stand as they are. The…

  • 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.

  • 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.…

  • One down, two to go

    This little stint of pulpit supply has offered me a more interesting reflective opportunity than I first thought it would. As previously mentioned, I’m ‘optimising my time’ by using the same service in three different places (albeit with some revision of hymns and sermon duration). The first one was delivered today and I wasn’t entirely…

  • 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).

  • 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…