It’s often hard to step back and see the wide horizon of the moment of time, in which we live. The breathing space that decades, and even centuries allow, is a luxury not usually available within a lifetime. Continue reading
Harold Wilson once said 'a week is a long time in politics'. On this basis it seems like the Reformation happened almost an eternity ago, yet we live daily in its wake. Continue reading
Evangelicalism is my family – it always has been. Along the way I’ve been part of a couple of Brethren churches, I’ve spent seventeen years leading a non-denominational, evangelical international church in Switzerland, and I pastored a Northern Irish Baptist Church for four years. These days, Sundays see me in a range of evangelical pulpits and I’ve been doing teaching at Belfast Bible College (interdenominational) and the Irish Baptist College. Continue reading
In 2017, post-modern distrust of authority is well-acknowledged and understood. All that lies between those who wield power and their destruction at the guillotine of public opinion is the capacity of social media to channel rebellion into Tweets and Facebook shares, anger into social anxiety. Continue reading
‘Churches’, says Phyllis Tickle, the American theologian of Emergent Church, ‘go through a rummage sale every five hundred years or so’. I love that image. So, five hundred years ago, in 1517, we saw the tipping point in the great rummage sale of the Reformation. Continue reading
As 2017 draws to an end it will be remembered for many reasons. It has been a rollercoaster year; with turbulence in current affairs of a level that many of us feel has been unprecedented in our life times. Passions run deep as arguments bounce back and forth, wafting and weaving through issues such as Trump’s rise, Brexit’s shape, Corbyn’s surge, and Weinstein’s breaking of a dam. Continue reading