The second Festival of Theology will be taking place on Wednesday 17th October in Nottingham from 10.30 am to 3.30 pm.
Come and listen to our fantastic speakers address some vital questions for Christian living, mission and discipleship in TED-style talks, with the opportunity to ask questions and interact.
Details of the programme and speakers can be found in this post. Book your ticket online here. See you there!
My most recent publication is the Tyndale New Testament Commentary on the Book of Revelation. You can order it from Amazon and other online retailers (make sure you order mine, and not the previous edition by Leon Morris!), or directly from the publisher on the IVP website.
My recent publications include:
- How to Interpret the Bible: four essential questions (Grove, 2017)
- Being Messy, Being Church (Bible Reading Fellowship, 2017)
- Kingdom, Hope and the End of the World (Grove, 2016)
- The Book of Revelation: currents in British research (Mohr Siebeck, WUNT, 2015)
- Evangelical Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities (Grove, 2016)
Are we treating clergy couples well?
In 2007 the local BBC TV station did a feature on Nicola and me as the youngest clergy couple in the Church of England. Fortunately the footage has since been lost! But what was still quite rare in 2007 is now the new norm – at least for women in training. Apparently 60% of women who are ordained will be in a clergy couple, Emma Ineson reported at the New Wine Clergy Couples gathering, (although when she tried to check this statistic with the CoE they said that they don’t keep those figures). Given that some ordained women will be single, this means that a very high proportion of married ordained women clergy are married to ordained men—and the converse is not true for ordained men.
This blog explores some of the opportunities and issues this raises, based on extensive conversations with clergy couples, seminars at New Wine and on-line engagement.
Included are: Training; power dynamics; corporation sole; job-sharing and job switching; couples working in different contexts; remuneration, including the variation in remuneration between different dioceses and the issues that causes nationally; local possibilities for remuneration and team/cluster ministries. It highlights how dioceses known to be couple-friendly might mitigate some of their recruitment problems through some creative thinking, encouragement and engagement.
Reading Mark 10: the contradictions of grace
When I last preached on the lectionary reading, Mark 10.2–16 (as many of you might just have done) I felt not a little intimidated by the challenge. It feels though…
Is the Bishops’ Policy on Civil Partnerships Sustainable?
The House of Bishops’ position on civil partnerships and same-sex sexual relationships is defined by three statements. The first is Issues in Human Sexuality, published in 1991 as a ‘discussion document’….
Trying to make sense of the End of the World: Sat 10th November
How should we respond to forecasts of the end of the world and a coming apocalypse? Will there be a ‘tribulation’ and a ‘rapture’? And what does the Bible really say about the end of the world and the return of Jesus?
These questions keep swirling around—but it is not always easy to find sensible answers.
In this accessible study morning, we will look carefully at the teaching of Jesus, Paul and others in the New Testament to see what they really thought. It turns out that expectation of ‘the end’ was important to the first followers of Jesus—but in ways very different from what we might find in the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
Is this the solution to our missional challenge?
At the last Archbishops’ Council, I was rather startled to come across a slide in a presentation on some background issues about funding and mission. The slide offered an analysis…
Why we need a new Lord’s Prayer
I have a confession: I find myself increasingly fidgety every time I say the Lord’s Prayer according to one of the accepted forms in English language. It all began with…
Does theology help makes sense of Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already all-pervasive in our daily lives. From social media algorithms, to medical equipment detecting heart conditions. But the ‘robots’ in our lives look very different from…
Is ‘Babylon’ Rome or Jerusalem?
In my commentary on the Book of Revelation, I assume without much discussion that references to ‘Babylon’ are in the first instance (for John and his readers) allusions to the…
Tragedy, sexuality and speaking the truth
Peter Ould writes: When I look back on my life (I’m coming up to my 45th birthday next year – very middle aged and very middle class) there are two events that…
Where is the cross in the Book of Revelation?
I have removed this article, pending publication in the journal Preach. A revised version will be made available on the blog after the print version has come out. Come and…
Why don’t men come to church?
Following from the discussion about God and gender earlier this week, and whether it has an implication for mission, a friend drew my attention to this post which I wrote…