spirituality

Is the Lord’s Prayer offensive?

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While I have been in the States for the weekend, I gather that back in the UK you’ve been experiencing a little local difficulty in relation to prayer, free speech, and the cinema. Digital Cinema Media (DCM), owned by Cineworld and Odeon and controlling about 80% of cinema advertising, decided not to screen a 60-second … Continue Reading

Spirituality as a bridge into culture

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Last weekend we had Brian Draper join us for the morning services and a lunchtime meeting on ‘everyday spirituality’. Brian used to work for the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, but is now a freelance writer and speaker, and has for some years been a contributor to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. I found Brian’s approach … Continue Reading

Should Lent and Advent swap?

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Evangelicals have not usually been strong on the liturgical year, possibly because of Paul’s language about ‘observing special days and months and seasons and years’ in Gal 4.10. But, like many evangelical Anglicans, I have come to appreciate the sense of rhythm and shape that calendar gives to the year; after all, even in our … Continue Reading

Pruning and fruitfulness

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With the beautiful spring weather, I have just completed my first hour back in the garden since abandoning it (more or less) over the winter. I devoted my time to pruning and offer some reflections here on the process. Pruning needs confidence. You only prune things that you think are going to continue to flower and … Continue Reading

Does faith come in stages?

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There are a number of reasons why we often feel we want to present the Christian faith to different groups of people in different ways, either expressing ideas by different means or addressing quite different issues. The most obvious context is that of working with children and young people. Young people live in a very … Continue Reading

Life as labyrinth

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Last week, returning from a half-term break in France, we had a tyre blow out on the autoroute and, since almost everything is closed on a Sunday in France, we had an unplanned extra day there. We stayed over in St Quentin, a town of ancient foundation which was the capital of the war-like Viromandui, … Continue Reading

Four prayers for the New Year

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I am not really convinced by the idea of New Year’s resolutions. Although it is good to reflect on life, our goals and priorities, resolutions have never really worked for me and I don’t think they work for many others. (January is the biggest time for new gym subscriptions—but the gym habit doesn’t last for most … Continue Reading

The Spirit and critical study (2)

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In my previous post, I highlighted the dilemma we find ourselves in when there is a dissonance between our experience of hearing God speak through Scripture and our experience of engaging in more reflective study of the same texts. I characterised these two sets of experiences as follows:   Immediacy — Delay Clarity — Ambiguity Relevance … Continue Reading

The Spirit and critical study (1)

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There is a widespread view that the work of the Spirit and the work of critical study of the Bible are like oil and water—they simply don’t mix. This is reinforced from both directions. People who read the Bible devotionally often look distinctly nervous when the subject of ‘academic’ study of the Bible comes up. … Continue Reading