Life & Ministry

Justin Welby and the Fiery Cauldron of a Broken Family

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Andrew Atherstone writes: One of the precious family letters treasured by Lady Jane Williams (the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mother) dates from December 1973, shortly before her son’s 18th birthday. It is written by Justin Welby’s housemaster at Eton College and is a frank tribute to the “tenacity” and “bravery” displayed by the young man during his … Continue Reading

Questions for evangelical leaders

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I am pleased to say that my Grove Leadership booklet Evangelical Leadership: challenges and opportunities is now available on the Grove website. You can order it post-free (in the UK) or have a PDF emailed to you. In it, I address what I think are the five major challenges for evangelical leaders—which of course offer five … Continue Reading

The sobering truth about Britain and the EU

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It is a well-known fact that membership of the EU has mired us in a quagmire of regulation created by faceless bureaucrats who impose their unelected agenda on poor British people, inhibiting our lives and business with absurd rules. The classic example comes in this analysis of the words in various documents: Lord’s Prayer – 66 … Continue Reading

Should we fix the date of Easter?

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I don’t really know Nick Holtam, Bishop of Salisbury (he was appointed after I left the diocese), but he appears to have a deep capacity for irony. Apparently he believes that fixing the date of Easter is going to be more complicated than agreeing on the status of same-sex unions: If the Primates of the … Continue Reading

Liturgy for a missional church

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Last week, it happened. Half way through Holy Week, I finally got fed up with reciting the opening prayer in Common Worship. The offending text is as follows: Blessed are you, Lord God of our salvation, to you be praise and glory for ever. As a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only … Continue Reading

Is the future of leadership lay or ordained?

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It is arguable that the greatest challenge currently facing the C of E is not to do with sexuality, not related to changes in culture and moral values, and unconnected with Church-State relations. It actually arises from a decision made around the time I started ordination training in 1989, that candidates needed ‘more experience of … Continue Reading

Are we allowed to fear immigration?

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When you wake up to hear that the Archbishop of Canterbury is the lead item on the morning news, then you feel something has either gone very right or something has gone very wrong. That’s what I felt last Friday, and the comments that prompted the headlines were in Justin Welby’s interview with Parliament’s The House magazine. … Continue Reading

Is Archbishops’ Council too powerful?

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I spent most of the last two days in my first meeting of Archbishops’ Council. I think I am still processing the experience, not least because to what one person called ‘institutional vertigo’—it feels a little surreal to be considering questions of national and strategic importance, when there are few other places to experience this. … Continue Reading

The Language of Leadership

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It is often commented that ‘leadership’ is not a very biblical word, and this should be a concern not just to evangelicals (who particularly want to root their understanding in the biblical texts) but to anyone who is in a reformed or Protestant church for which Scripture is a key locus of authority. The first … Continue Reading

Can the C of E do evangelism?

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One of Justin Welby’s personal commitments for his time in office is to prioritise evangelism. With the Archbishop of York he set up the Evangelism Task Group as part of Archbishops’ Council, and it reported to Synod earlier this month. Introducing it, Welby emphasised the centrality of evangelism to the life of the church: On … Continue Reading

Are evangelicals taking over the Church?

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Something has changed in the Church of England. It is a radical change, but one that has not attracted much comment. I was alerted to it when Martyn Snow was announced as the next Bishop of Leicester. A diocese with a long tradition of liberal leadership, most recently under Tim Stevens, has appointed someone with … Continue Reading