The Second Sunday of Advent
I had a good time away for numerous reasons but the main one was being with family. It was simply good to get a sense of how everyone is doing – seeing them in their surroundings or hearing about them – and sharing our…
Tag: Thought for the Week
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Last week I wrote ‘You don’t come home all jolly and happy from a visit of battlefields …’ and you might be expecting me to begin similarly having just come home the ELCE’s synodical convention! That’s the caricature often isn’t it? That church meetings…
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentacost
You don’t come home all jolly and happy from a visit of battlefields, museums, and cemeteries or walking through towns and country sides that are rebuilt yet have scars for those who look closely. We stayed at Talbot House in Poperinge (Belgium) precisely because…
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentacost
I recently listened to a podcast about ‘cos play’ where people dress up in the costume of a favourite character from film or TV – often science fiction – and attend conventions and other events in character so to speak. The costumes can be…
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
The actress, Jodie Whitaker, is going to be the next Doctor when Peter Capaldi hands over the sonic screwdriver in the Christmas Special of Doctor Who. The announcement was important – the BBC interrupted its Wimbledon broadcast – and the WHOverse was definitely vocal….
The Presentation of the Augsburg Confession
My week has been dominated by the ELCE financial audit. We have to give an account of our-selves to the world because in the UK the ELCE is a registered charity and there are certain responsibilities that go with that status and for which…
The Second Sunday after Pentecost
We might have been away but we weren’t out of touch. The fire. The election. ELCE Church politics. Marriage matters. Unemployment. Health concerns. People’s choices. Good news moments. Pregnancy. Hospital. Tests. Walking in the shadow of death. Reconciliations. And more. All intertwined with sunshine,…
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
The ELCE’s Pastors’ Study Week has come and gone. So have the guests who joined us from Australia, Denmark, France, Ghana, Guatemala, Hong Kong and the United States – all of whom were so impressed that they said that they wanted to come again….
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
It was one of those incidental conversations that happen at the back of an airplane. Old(er) men walking and stretching; a camaraderie in avoiding thrombosis. We struck up a conversa-tion and it wasn’t too long before I was in a world of international development…
The Second Sunday of Easter
I am speaking to you but you have no idea where I am. Where I am right now. (To be fair, I only have a hunch about where you are when you’re reading this.) You know the hemi-sphere and the country of my whereabouts…