Thomas Mann's phrase that 'everything is politics' seems undeniably true in our society in the second decade of the twenty first century. Online platforms, initially created for socialising with (and snooping on) friends old and new have become charged spaces where affinities and antagonisms feed the insatiable beast of constant controversy. The era of having…
Church families are returning to their buildings once again in the UK and Ireland, after a break of almost four months. For many this is a welcome signal that some semblance of normality is once again being recovered, for others it is a time of intensified anxiety over what feel like huge steps forward in…
As the barriers erected by Covid 19 in the UK and Ireland start to lift a little, the prospect of being able to gather for public worship is beginning to glimmer on the horizon. Governmental sanction for regathering is simply affirmative of what many church leaders have been feeling - we are almost at the…
Whether your cup is half empty or half full in the current global crisis, whether you credit or descry online ministry, the fact cannot be avoided that the era of vacant church buildings and silent pulpits is a significant and sad chapter in the history of the church. We are in the midst of a…
These are undoubtedly the strangest of days. We are in a state of upheaval and disruption, and we have no idea when or if normal service might resume. We are living in a cultural pause, an on-air silence which becomes more uncomfortable by the day, an interval which is quickly seeming to be longer than…
In approaching the narrative sections of Scripture, there is always the danger of foreclosure, of assuming the conclusion, and missing the true nature of the issues at hand. The story is always easier when you can read the ending, the drama reduced when you know the outcome, but give a man or woman the middle…
At the moment it seems like everything is interim. The decisions that we were agonising over a fortnight ago about public events and human contact seem like the naive deliberations of an earlier age, such has been the spread of coronavirus and the protective measures seeking to shore up our defences. The United Kingdom and…
A measure of our new sense of normality is that the decision whether or not to run church services has become a global point of conversation. A month ago such circumstances were not on the radar of most, a year ago they would have been unintelligible. In the United Kingdom we are presently teetering on…
In the present global health crisis there are some whose fears and needs could easily become a footnote to a larger narrative of reassurance and confidence. While coronavirus will one day be a memory, and while most who experience it will find it mild and minor, there is a margin of people for whom news…
The first Lord’s Day since the Covid-19 Coronavirus began to reach our shores has passed. In most fellowships in the UK and Ireland some mention will have been made of it, and perhaps some low key precautions put in place. Along with the ubiquitous hand sanitiser tubs, and the comedic elbow bumps, there has also…
