Posts

How can we encourage our church family to know God’s word well?

It starts with children.  Look at your teaching programme for your Sunday School and also what you do with your midweek clubs.  At Bearwood we used a programme with our 4-11s that took them through the whole Bible.  With our 11-16s, they were either joining in the main Sunday morning teaching programme at our 9:30… Continue reading How can we encourage our church family to know God’s word well?

Trauma, grief and response to abuse

Over the past few years, I’ve written and spoken quite a bit about the problem of abusive cultures particularly in the context of church life. First of all, my concern is to see us doing better in letting what we believe affect how we live so that doctrines of grace lead to cultures of grace.… Continue reading Trauma, grief and response to abuse

Why it is important that we help vaccinate the world

The UK’s efforts in delivering the COVID-19 vaccinations has been phenomenal. We now have over 50% of the population fully vaccinated and a further 25% have received one jab. This along with those not yet vaccinated who have had a dose of the virus means we should be moving towards herd immunity. However, there are… Continue reading Why it is important that we help vaccinate the world

June 21st -where are we and what does that mean for churches?

We’re getting a bit closer to June 21st and are tensely waiting the Prime Minister’s press conference on Monday when we’ll know whether or not the final lifting of pandemic/lockdown measures will happen. Church leaders will be watching and waiting with baited breath because Monday’s announcement will affect whether and when we can return to… Continue reading June 21st -where are we and what does that mean for churches?

An excuse for sin? (Romans 6:1-14)

You can also watch this back (with discussion exercises) here When I started work after University, my workplace had a clocking in system. Each week we would collect a time card and then put it into a machine to be time stamped when we arrived in the morning, started and finished our lunchbreak and went… Continue reading An excuse for sin? (Romans 6:1-14)

Christians don’t (shouldn’t) bear grudges

One of the saddest things in Christian life is when you meet or hear about people, sometimes within the same church who have not spoken for years. Similarly you can even discover churches where there has been rivalry going on since a split decades ago.  Sometimes Christians will disagree sharply. The Apostle Paul disagreed with… Continue reading Christians don’t (shouldn’t) bear grudges