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Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, conducted a radio phone-in on LBC Radio. Gillan Scott, over at God and Politics, characterised it as ‘a breath of fresh air’: Spending an hour answering questions he covered plenty of ground and it was refreshing to hear him talking freely on a range of subjects firsthand including … Continue Reading
Having missed (though recorded) the first episode of the new series of Rev, I managed to catch the second episode last night…along with (it seems) half of the Church of England clergy. Not surprisingly, the main plot line followed Adam Smallbone’s convoluted attempts ‘not’ to marry a gay couple in his church, but simply say … Continue Reading
They say that, in war, the first casualty is truth—and in the war of words about World Vision USA’s decision to change their terms of employment this certainly seems to be the case. Richard Stearns, President of World Vision USA, announced in an interview with Christianity Today that its policy restricting employment to Christians who … Continue Reading
I was incredibly moved by the second episode of Famous, Rich and Hungry tonight. If you didn’t get a chance to watch it, then do so if at all you can. The four wealthy celebrities each moved to a second location, to see if they could apply what they had learnt from their first experiences … Continue Reading
This is the second of three posts exploring in turn how to start, build and share a blog. The first part can be found here. A few years, it used to be fairly easy to find out how to start and build a blog, as blogging was a fairly new thing, and most bloggers saw … Continue Reading
One of the delights of the internet is that once you are in the public domain, you can be savaged and mauled (verbally at least) by complete strangers. I have experienced this a little in blogging and on Facebook, but it appears to be a regular pastime of atheists to attack random Christians on Twitter. … Continue Reading
The Church Times has been running a series of interesting article on the state of the Church, with some significant insights from Linda Woodhead, Professor of the Sociology of Religion at the University of Lancaster. Previous articles have explored issues of church growth, leadership, and some of the reasons behind the decline in church attendance. … Continue Reading
This is the first of three posts exploring in turn starting, building and sharing a blog Like many aspects of the internet and in particular social media, blogging divides the world. On the one hand, in some circles it seems that everyone blogs copiously and effortlessly. On the other hand, a good number of people … Continue Reading
The House of Bishops issued a statement in response to the Government’s introduction of ‘gay marriage’ on Saturday—just managing to avoid St Valentine’s Day. I suggested earlier that this was the next ‘banana skin’ that they faced, and (to mix metaphors) they have played it with a straight bat (no pun intended). The pastoral statement … Continue Reading
Here is my letter written to the Church Times this week: Dear Sir Thank you for the fascinating and insightful articles on the state of the Church. But two issues hover just under the surface and need more attention. The first is that the real need is not for greater understanding, but for greater willingness … Continue Reading
Nineteenth-century missionaries were culturally insensitive colonials, colluding with the colonial powers to oppress local culture and impose their own values, to the detriment of those they were proselytising. Right? Wrong, according to some remarkable research reported in this month’s Christianity Today. For many of our contemporaries, no one sums up missionaries of an earlier era … Continue Reading
Ian Paul: theologian, author, speaker, academic consultant. Associate Senior Research Fellow, Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology; Associate Minister, St Nic's, Nottingham; Managing Editor, Grove Books; member of General Synod and Archbishops' Council. Mac user; chocoholic. Tweets at @psephizo
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Gospel commentary index Lectionary Year A
Andrew Goddard Bible biblical interpretation Biblical literacy biblical theology Christmas Church of England culture discipleship discussion doctrine eschatology evangelism gay General Synod Grove guest Hermeneutics History hope interpretation James Blandford Baker Jesus John's gospel Justin Welby leadership lectionary Luke Luke's gospel Matthew ministry mission New Testament Paul politics preaching Revelation same sex marriage same sex unions sexuality theology video Year A Year B Year C
