Last week, I engaged with Tim Suffield on whether pastors have jobs or not. Someone who engaged more supportively with Tim was John Barach. He tweeted: My response was that this is all sounds very pleasant but isn’t how Scripture describes the call to pastoral ministry. He responded by saying: In our conversation he developed… Continue reading How we talk about the pastor’s role matters
Category: ethics
Perhaps pastors are modelling what work was meant to be like
I’ve engaged recently with a suggestion that pastors do not really have jobs. I’m going to engage further this week with another person who has argued that pastors are paid to enjoy leisure time. However something struck me which I want to focus on first. A lot of the argument seems to assume that pastors… Continue reading Perhaps pastors are modelling what work was meant to be like
Help! My city has gone bust.
This week, Birmingham City Council announced that they had issued a Section 114 notice, the public sector equivalent of announcing bankruptcy. This means that spending is under severe controls, limited to “protecting vulnerable people and statutory services.” With all other spending stopping with immediate effect.[1] What exactly does all of this mean for the city… Continue reading Help! My city has gone bust.
How many of the Ten Commandments did Adam and Eve break?
Adam and Eve broke one specific commandment in the Garden of Eden: not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, I want to suggest that there is a sense in which they may well have been breaking each of the Ten Commandments. How? Well, first of all, by listening to… Continue reading How many of the Ten Commandments did Adam and Eve break?
Freedom in Christ changes relationships to others
As well as writing letters to churches, Paul wrote to a few individuals. We have three examples in Scripture, though I’m sure he wrote more. He writes to his co-workers Timothy and Titus giving them instructions about how to pastor the churches within their care. The third example, to Philemon is even more personal. Paul… Continue reading Freedom in Christ changes relationships to others
How might Christians enjoy a Sunday Sabbath?
I’ve argued that Christians should observe Sunday as their Sabbath day. So, how should we go about it? I commented in my first article that one of the reasons why people turned away from the idea of Sabbath was that in many circles it had become legalistic with heavy, arbitrary rules about what you could… Continue reading How might Christians enjoy a Sunday Sabbath?
Is Sunday the Christian sabbath?
The other day I wrote about whether Christians should keep Sunday as their Sabbath day. There are four primary objections to the suggestion. We dealt with the first one in the previous article, the argument that Sabbath obligations no longer apply because we are under grace, not law. The other two suggest that whilst Christians… Continue reading Is Sunday the Christian sabbath?
Should Christians keep Sunday as a Sabbath day?
When I was younger, the UK still had very strict rules on things like Sunday trading and sport. However, the Thatcher government was in the process of seeking to liberalise most rules. There was a prominent movement seeking to resist the arrival of Sunday trading including organisations such as The Lord’s Day Observance Society (now… Continue reading Should Christians keep Sunday as a Sabbath day?
Relearning our theological triage
One of the challenges that we all faced during COVID was that the intense pressure on health care meant that none urgent surgery and treatment had to be cancelled. There were two reasons for this. First, hospitals were at capacity treating virus patients. Second, we wanted to minimise face to face contact to reduce the… Continue reading Relearning our theological triage
Let’s get the complementarianism/ egalitarianism debate in perspective
I wrote my MTh dissertations on pastoral ethics relating to marriage. My current work is focused on raising up leaders to plant churches in urban contexts. This combined with another factor means that a particular topic comes up from time to time and you will find me writing about it here. The third factor is… Continue reading Let’s get the complementarianism/ egalitarianism debate in perspective
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