Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
Ian Paul
Mike Starkey writes: It’s early afternoon on Friday 16 October 2026. I enter the public transport office in central Strasbourg, next to the Alt Winmärik tram stop. Alt Winmärik means Old Wine Market in the old Germanic Alsace dialect. From the 14th century onwards, this street was the place wine was bought and sold. A …
In the epistle for Trinity 21 in Year A, 1 Thess 2.1–8, Paul and his co-authors explain their approach to ministry, but do so by appeal to what the Thessalonians knew of them. They distance themselves from itinerant philosophers, who speak out of personal gain, and instead talk of being entrusted with the gospel of …
Why was a faculty application for a portable baptismal pool in a church in Southwell and Nottingham rejected? What does that tell us about processes in the Church of England—and are they fit for purpose? It is not often that a consistory court judgment makes the national press, and when it does it is usually …
The gospel reading for Trinity 20 in Year A is Matthew 22.15–22, the short exchange between Jesus and his opponents on the question of the Roman ‘poll’ tax. This has important theological implications for our understanding of issues of politics and power, though it is often misread. Jesus doesn’t teach the ‘separate realms’ that many …
The situation in the Middle East dominates our news—yet so much comment is woefully ill-informed. What do we need to understand, and how can the Church remedy its failure to be peacemakers in what it says and does? Will Briggs writes: There has rarely been a timelier book inserted into public discourse as Simon Sebag …
Paul’s opens his earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians (the reading for Trinity 20 in Years A) with a range of remarkable affirmations. Already he is expressing in nuce things that he will expand on in later letters. But the pattern remains consistent all through his writing. What do we learn from this, and how do we …
The Green Party has become one of the most extreme in the UK following its annual conference. If the Church of England bans clergy from being members of other extreme parties, why not this one? At their annual conference, the Green Party passed a number of measures, most of which went unreported. They included: Inclusive …
The lectionary gospel for Trinity 19 in Year A is Matthew 22.1–14, the parable of the wedding banquet. This is the third of three parables about judgement in this section of the gospel, and these wider chapters all focus on judgement (we will be hearing more about this before we reach Advent), so you might …
When the Church of England changed its practice to allow the ordination of women, there was a period of ‘open reception.’ Is there a parallel with same-sex marriage? Could ‘open reception’ both work and preserve unity? What are the major obstacles to such an idea? Andrew Goddard writes: The House of Bishops in July’s General Synod …
The epistle for Trinity 19 in Year A is Phil 4.1–9. This reading follows on from the previous teaching about ‘having your citizenship in heaven’ and expounds what that means. But the passage starts with an extraordinary expression of Paul’s affection for his readers in Philippi, and concludes with a challenging expression of how he …
The experience and sense of encounter with the Holy Spirit in Christian devotion is often set against the rational task of critical evaluation of the meaning of Scripture. But are these two necessarily opposed? And what happens when we bring them together? There is a widespread view that the work of the Spirit and the …
