Fathers to tend the desert

One of my refrains to God in prayer, over the last few years, has been something along the lines of Psalm 63: “You, God, are my God, I earnestly seek you … in this dry and weary land where there is no water.” It has been thrown into sharp relief recently by the weather in …

The dangers of reading theology

It’s been a while since my last post and whilst a big part of that is down to moving, I no longer live in London, the real reason is that I’ve been at something of a low ebb since then. Moving took me out of my church and forced me to attempt to find a …

The Lord’s Supper. Part One: Introduction and Scripture

What follows will be a post, or posts, on the Lord’s Supper in scripture and the early church. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write for awhile but to be honest I’ve found it, as a subject, in many ways much more complicated than baptism. The first ever ‘long’ post I did early on was …

The Body of Christ

In my last post I wrote up a reflection I had on the Nicene Creed and I've been continuing to have a think about what it is I believe and attempting to put this in writing. I've since gone away and had a go at writing up my views on the church as it stands. …

Parish decline and pioneer ministry

I recently read a piece over on Unherd by the Journalist/Priest Giles Fraser on ‘The neoliberal revolution within the Church’ which I’d normally have passed over but something in this has made me want to dig deeper into the claims it makes. I normally like some of the stuff Fraser writes, but in this instance …

Plans to prosper

Off the back of a conversation I had recently I’ve been prompted to explore what a positive vision of what the future could look like in my own context. This is in response to the fact that it was felt that the general diagnosis of the future doesn’t look great from the perspective of an …

The Internet, Amputation, and Worship

Like everyone in the UK currently I have spent the last few weeks in lockdown. Whilst it’s far from ideal it is a time of real blessing because I am spending so much more time with my family. Life has gotten smaller, more cohesive, and more community-minded. We leave gifts with our neighbours and exchange …

Francis Chan and Holy Communion

A group I frequent online posted the below clip of the relatively well known US author pastor Francis Chan talking about the reason people gather for Church. I was amazed by his answer because, with some disagreements on the history of his answer, I otherwise found myself in total agreement with him. That the main …

Reimagining the Parish and Beyond

Off the back of my recent post redesigning my Parish church after reading about the tradition of the Church of England when it came to the Lord's Supper I've been thinking about how Parishes, Dioceses, and potentially Provinces could be organised. What follows, I think makes sense, but I'm not under any illusions that there …

Inspired by the North Side. Reimagining my Parish Church.

I recently read an article on the distinctive way in which the Church of England has historically served communion. It opened: For three hundred years the Church of England was unique among all other churches across the world in relation to where the minister was to stand.  The Book of Common Prayer rubric from 1552 …