Not many posts on my blog are personal, mostly they are about an idea or a viewpoint on a topic that I’ve been thinking about. But I thought that, given the break I’ve taken from that kind of post, it was time to fill you in on what’s been happening and some plans and ideas. […]
Today is November 30th, strike day across the UK. Universities across the country are being occupied in protest against the ‘reforms’ that are planned to come in next year, public workers are protesting against the changes to pensions that will see them paying more for longer in return for a smaller payout in many cases. […]
I’ve written a post for Provokotive Magazine touching on Michel Foucault and the shift in power that the use of mobile phones and other highly portable video recorders has made in the protests this year. The all-seeing ‘panopticon’ has been inverted and state surveillance has almost been overtaken by the people providing their own view of […]
Reading ‘The King Jesus Gospel‘ by Scot McKnight had moments of that bizarre experience of someone thinking your thoughts after you, then having the analytic insight to go deeper and find answers that are intuitively right but you hadn’t reached. Though I posted a quote on the subject of ‘what is the gospel‘ just a […]
An interesting article titled ‘Why the missional movement will fail‘ was posted in one of the Facebook groups I’m a part of earlier this week. While my immediate church context would not identify itself as ‘missional’, we’ve often been described as a ‘mission church’ and we’d probably often accept the label. I also have friends who […]
It was an interesting experience to go along to a new church housegroup, discussing the notes I’d written. A good experience, it can certainly help me reflect on what I write and what I leave out. That’s for another day, however, as I’ve been set off by a thought that was shared by someone in […]
I’ve now written or spoken about four of the churches in Revelation 2-3 and you might be interested to hear and read it. Letters to tolerant and compromised churches: Pergamum and Thyatira (Revelation 2:12-29) First, the churches of Pergamum and Thyatira: you can hear my sermon and see the presentation on the Canley website. Second, […]
Some of the criticisms I have heard of the Occupy protesters have been utterly ridiculous. I’ll lay them out (and take them down a bit too) below the video, but you might like to see I’m not making them up – they are that obviously facile! Number 1: “Protests are pointless, they achieve nothing”. Polly Toynbee’s response […]
I made the mistake of confusing Tim Ferriss with Timothy Ferriss, so I was surprised to be disappointed with an article on Wired, “Timothy Ferriss: The World of the Intellectual vs. The World of the Engineer”. I often read Tim’s blog, I’m fascinated by his approach to self-experimentation. So the over-simplification and scientism of the article surprised […]
[These are the notes prepared for the housegroups at Canley Community Church – the first in a series on the letters to the seven churches.] “We’ll be reading the book of Revelation for the next few weeks.” That’s a scary thought for lots of Christians – not just because of the scary things that are […]