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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The swing of a pendulum can be a dangerous thing, correctives can oversteer away from one error and into another, and the way in which we conceive of pastoral work is no exception. A quick sounding of ideas and sentiments about ministry on social media will reveal a trend towards therapeutic models for pastors to…
It is something we may not like to acknowledge to ourselves and to others, but as Pastors we make mistakes - regularly and sometimes even repeatedly. We are fallible men, charged with a phenomenal task, which often outstrips our abilities and sufficiency. In the mix and mess of our lives, and those of others, errors…
The news is becoming horribly familiar - a pastor who has been used of God, who has even counselled and helped others through their struggles with depression and self destructive thoughts, takes their own life. The tragedy of Jarrid Wilson's suicide that emerged yesterday is all the more poignant given his work of intentionally teaching…
