What enters our minds (as local church leaders and/or gospel workers) when we think of inner-city housing schemes, council estates, and/or projects (or other socially deprived areas we know of)? What do you think that the residents need in order to alleviate the problems they face? It is easy to try to appease a guilty […]

I was away for the weekend and read a handful of books, so I thought I would give them an airing this week as we work on trying to update our site in the coming weeks. Hopefully, we will be coming up with an all new blog format too! Watch this space. So, my second […]

I picked up this little book (and three others in the series—reviews to follow) on my recent trip to the States. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect given the evangelical church’s ‘pass the hand grenade’ approach to dealing with this topic. But what a great little book it is. Allberry reminds us from the […]

Those of you who know me personally or have followed this blog for any length of time will know that I read a lot of books. A while back, I read a book entitled, ‘Toxic Charity: How the Church Hurts Those They Help (and How to Reverse It)’. I will enclose a short review here, […]

Church planters and pastors of all ilks are united by the fact that they (normally) have strong personalities. This is doubly so for those of us who work in housing schemes and/or other similar situations. We have to lead, often make snap decisions, and carry/encourage/develop/mentor a group of people seeking to live for Christ in […]

I often get asked how and why we have so many contacts and have so many unchurched people attending our services throughout the week. The answer is quite simple: 1. We pray for people. Are you really praying for people in your area, consistently, specifically, and intelligently? When I first came to Niddrie, I started […]

So, I’ve discovered Jared C. Wilson quite late. Up until recently, he wasn’t a person who had entered my radar. I then saw his name on a Matt Chandler book (Explicit Gospel, I think) and then one day, completely out of the blue, he emailed me to write one of those thing-a-ma-jigs people write on […]

More booklet than book, this is a short, snappy, punchy, and irenic (I looked it up—it means peaceable) look at what Jeremy (Walker sounds so formal and JW has other connotations) has termed ‘New Calvinists’. To be fair to him, it’s not his term, but he does adopt it and apply it to various high […]

This is David Robertson's follow up book to his immensely (and more) enjoyable “Dawkins Letters”. His subtext is Why Jesus IS Great and, I have to say, it is a masterfully (and mercifully) simple (in the non-critical sense!) work of apologetics. This is how you make highfalutin philosophy and theology accessible to mere mortals like […]

Yesterday we looked at a series of questions I would consider to be fundamental when seeking to work in partnership with voluntary groups, mission teams, and individual donors. Today, I would like to reverse the questions. So, if you are an individual seeking to support a work like ours (or any work for that matter), […]