Part IV: War, Princeton, Death & Other Stuff All the drama of Edwards’ life was being played out amid the backdrop of worldwide upheaval. In 1754, the international scene was becoming very unstable. On the home front, Benjamin Franklin met with leaders from seven other colonies to discuss the French intentions in the frontiers. The […]

Part III: Sacked, Yet More Opposition, Indians & Other Stuff In the public arena, at least, the ‘Northampton Controversy’ of 1749 was concerned with Edward’s supposedly ‘new’ view on Communion and Baptism (he denied the charge that it was new). Edwards wanted to restrict communion to believing members only and restrict infant baptism to full […]

Part II: Snappy Book Titles, More Revival, Opposition & Other Stuff What I particularly like about this biography is that it never seeks to paint Edwards in a sinless light. His weaknesses are laid bare, not least his tendency for hyperbole in some of his writings, but also his penchant for ‘editing’ the opinions of […]

A sizeable 615 pages (the last 100 or so being footnotes and appendices), this is the sort of book that strikes fear into all but the most avid of readers. It looks unwieldy and intimidating, but I think that it is so good that it merits a long review over 4 parts. . . . […]

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 […]

So my Assistant Pastor bought this for me last week with the quip: “Saw this and immediately thought of you.” He wasn’t laughing so much as I pushed him out of the nearest window when he wasn’t looking. So, the book. First off, great title or what! I immediately liked the look of it just from […]

“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 […]