I am interested in how we construct reality – determine what is. What is real seems to me to be what is in existence and while we use our senses and our reason to largely determine this, the existence of a supernatural world (a…
I need to write a review of Ascension over the last 5 years or so for The British Lutheran. My guess at the moment is that it will be largely a story of the same activities each year but with different people. Ascension’s congregational…
The idea of trusting something or someone involves security or lack of concern – you are safe. Etymologists suggest that the background meaning in the Semitic languages is falling down or lying down or even knocking down. This action transitions when in safety to…
I write this between trips – having just returned from a ‘Luther trip’ and will shortly leave for Plymouth and the anniversary service at St Peter’s. The number 500 is evident wherever one goes in Germany that is part of the Reformation story whether…
I have a getting-on-my-hobby-horse moment from time to time. I suppose for the world it’s almost a Don-Quixote-tilting-at-windmills moment over the use of the word ‘good’. I’d like churches to have big notices on the sides of their buildings ‘Good people don’t go to…
Whereas some in society might have hoped for religious decline in the 21st century and, depending on which statistics you note, might even cite less adherents or religious practices, religion is certainly not invisible on the front page of paper or screen. The recent…
What would we do in all our towns and villages if God communicated to all churches that there was to be only one group meeting together? (Well, for starters, we’d have, at least, to listen to each other if there was no option!) I…
I enjoyed Pastors’ Study Week. (This wasn’t meant to say that I don’t usually enjoy them but you know how it is with conferences or classes – and Pastors’ Study Week is a mixture of both – that some engage you more than others.)…
I wasn’t surprised at the result of the Irish referendum voting in favour of same-sex marriage. I was somewhat surprised at the media reporting which described the result as ‘overwhelming’ when to my mathematical head the result of the actual voting was 62% yes…
I am thinking in words. I am writing words. You are reading words. You are ‘hearing’ them – thinking them and about them. This is a way of communication. You know what I am thinking or feeling – what I want to say. Can…
