Some people are so frustrating and annoying. That is a fact of life. It is unavoidable. Even the most sanctified and patient of us struggle with difficult people (just ask my wife). There is a danger though, and it is this: Sometimes we hear something about another Christian or a leader and we make up […]
One of the fundamental errors of many church-planting movements is to assume that the greatest need in terms of poverty is found only within inner cities. Whilst it is true that there is often a greater concentration of deprived people in urban contexts, rural areas suffer disproportionately too. The Highlands of Scotland, often (rightly) thought […]
So, the critique of 20schemes gathers apace in some parts of the Scottish church. “Over reliant on American money”,“going to swamp our country with ghastly Americans”, “an unnecessary organisation given that every scheme has a Parish church”,“they suppress women”, “they're going to ride roughshod over existing church initiatives”. When we launched 20schemes last November, nobody […]
“When I first came to church I found the women a bit confusing. I thought they all fancied me because they kept talking to me and asking me stuff about my life. Where I come from that means a girl fancies you. I thought I was a right stud with all these girls after me. […]
I am having conversations about Christian women more and more with our new Christian men. What sort of woman should they ‘look out’ for? How do you know if it’s the right one? How do you know if they like you or are just being nice to you? According to one of my men: “When […]
I am having conversations about Christian women more and more with our new Christian men. What sort of woman should they ‘look out’ for? How do you know if she’s the ‘right one’? How do you know if they like you or are just being nice to you? According to one of my men: “When […]
“We cannot defend the truth by creating caricatures.” So stands the conviction of the White Horse Inn as they have been engaging in debates with people from all sorts of theological persuasions over the last two decades. The web is a troll’s dream come true, as they move around from blog to blog and twitter […]
Long-time followers of this blog will be only too aware of my opinion(s) on the reason we have such a shortage of healthy gospel churches and trained, indigenous leadership in the poorer areas of the UK. Pretty much all of the internships, training pathways, and leadership development initiatives are aimed at, and packaged for, the […]
By and large, Christians like to speak. They have got something of eternal significance to say, after all. Yet, how many of us are poor listeners? So poor, in fact, that far too many Christians don’t have any non-Christian friends. They think they do. But they don’t. If you have been a believer for any […]
So went the (so-called) joke when I was growing up in a council estate in Yorkshire in the late 80’s. The answer? ‘At least you get a part of your kid back from a dangerous dog’. The point? In housing schemes, Social Workers are viewed as the Gestapo, with the power to turn up at […]