Broadly, if not universally, these are extremely tough times to be a Pastor. Compared with the searing persecution of previous generations, or the relative penury of our nearer forbears, we do of course have it easy, but Pastors today are facing unique pressures. Following the shutdown of our public worship services globally, the diminishment of…
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 I write these words, our home has descended into the silence of sleep on a Saturday night, and I am alone in the study. In earlier, more normal days, these were the moments when the Lord's Day, the pulpit, and the task of preaching were given final reflection. These were the hours in which…
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…
How are we to answer the exigencies and anxieties of the hour? What tone of voice and approach should we assume when the world is crying out for answers? What dangers lie in uncertain speech, in mumbled sounds, as men and women hunger and thirst to know true reality? During this week I have been…
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…
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 eyes of many Patrick is the patron saint of excess, a figurehead for beer-fuelled parades and parties. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. To read Patrick’s personal writings is to encounter an individual of scrupulous integrity, personal piety, and missionary austerity, a man whose life became solely focussed on the…
One of the mirages of our modern lives is that we are stable and secure in terms of our most basic needs. Far from famine ravaged territories, where one’s chief drama is to watch for rainfall for next season’s crops, away from war torn regions where one’s home and livelihood might any day be overwhelmed…
There is much that is notional and fleeting in the approach of a New Year, and there is a great danger in setting in spin the toothless cogs of self improvement for another season with no meaningful change or true challenge gaining traction in our will. Our resolve to change can fizz and fade like…
