I thoroughly enjoyed this post from Church Ethos blog: Evangelicals are fond of metrics. I don’t think the Church Growth Movement started this, but they took it to new levels, looking for ways to measure things that contribute to increased attendance. As a software engineer, I can certainly appreciate this. But I also know a […]
Month: June 2009
The Daily Telegraph has another of the ‘decline of Christian Britain’ articles which seem to be a part of its stock in trade. The interesting thing is that the current article is written by the assistant bishop of Newcastle. If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by […]
Reading the Bible in Greek and Hebrew
Brian makes the case for reading Greek and Hebrew superbly in this post: The Scriptures exist as the story in which we are to find ourselves as individuals and as community. In the missional reality of our day, there is no room for superficial engagement with the Bible. I fully understand that it is unrealistic […]
God’s Story Through Deaf Hands
The latest Wycliffe UK Magazine is out now. You can download it free here (pdf 1.5 MB) I wrote the introduction to the magazine… The God Story through deaf hands Stories show our emotions, our commitments and our passions in a way that simple facts never can. This is why God has given us the […]
Trust in Religion
There is an interesting discussion at Duke Divinity on the way in which confidence in organised religion has fallen in the US over the years. The big question is how do we react to this? HT Mark Sayers.
Conspiracy Theory
Dan Wallace has posted a fascinating piece on the idea that modern translations of the Bible are the result of a new age conspiracy. So, is there a conspiracy today? My answer may surprise the reader: yes, I believe there is. But the conspiracy has not produced these modern translations. Rather, I believe that there […]
God’s Story
This is a presentation I recently gave at a Wycliffe UK supporters’ day. It looks at the challenges faced by an organisation that wants to promote the Bible in contemporary British society. If you don’t want to watch the slides, you can download the mp3 file. The whole thing lasts a little over thirty minutes. […]
Teenagers don’t believe in God
According to today’s Telegraph Nearly two thirds of teenagers don’t believe in God, according to a study by Penguin books. It also emerged six out of ten 10 children (59 per cent) believe that religion “has a negative influence on the world”. The survey also shows that half of teenagers have never prayed and 16 […]
Ben has tagged me with a meme about books which have influenced how I read the Bible: Name 5 books or scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible. [Ken Brown has collected responses.] The New International Version of the Bible. I grew up using the AV. It wasn’t […]
Holiday Reading: Serious Stuff
Zeebrugge: Eleven VCs Before Breakfast (Cassell Military Paperbacks). If you enjoy military history, this is a good little read. It describes British attempts to block the U Boat pens in Bruges during the first world war. I didn’t actually know there were any U Boat pens in Bruges, so the book was all new to […]