Resident Aliens

The animal kingdom is full of ‘protected species’. From the Great Crested Newt to the Giant Panda, the White Rhino to the Western Lowland Gorilla, it is a criminal offence to interfere with them or kill them. Sadly there is no such protective status for the species minister gospelensis – minister...

Churches (as communities of professing Christians) are meant to be safe places. But all too often this has not been the case. Revelations of widespread abuse in many churches has seriously damaged the reputation and trustworthiness of the church as a whole before the watching world. It could be...

Heaven has been splashed all over the headlines of the secular press this past week. It was, of course, because of the unexpected death of David Bowie and the way he choreographed his own departure from this world. The news of Bowie’s death came as a shock, not least because no-one apart from a...

Another year is almost over, a new one about to begin. All over the world party-goers and New Year revellers will mark the moment from the Sydney Opera House to the Paris Champs Elysees, from Trafalgar Square to Times Square. But how much thought will they give to the significance of ‘time’ itself...

In the midst of all the sermon and service preparations associated with the Christmas season we often fail to appreciate the role of the Holy Spirit in the events celebrated. While we are right to focus on the wonder of the eternal Son taking human flesh and entering our world, we can overlook the...

The first Letter of John, filed among the ‘General Letters’ section near the end of the New Testament is an enigmatic, but hugely significant part of the Bible. At first glance its message seems very straightforward; but on closer inspection (as I discovered recently to my chagrin when I started...

Yesterday I was with some fellow-ministers for our monthly fraternal. Our current focus for discussion is Tim Keller’s book on preaching [1] and we were looking at his chapter on ‘Preaching the Word’. Its key thought is our need as preachers to grasp that the power and authority of God himself are...

It is the unavoidable certainty in life; but also the great taboo. In the midst of life it is never far away; but many are afraid to contemplate it. Yet we find it in Scripture: a dark thread running all the way through its message. From the first warning about it in Eden (Ge 2.17) to the final...

Thursday, October 21st was apparently ‘Back to the Future’ day – the day to which the characters played by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd were propelled forward in time in Back to the Future II exactly 30 years ago. The occasion was marked in the UK with their legendary De Lorean sports car...

‘What are the marks of a true church?’ is a question that has quite rightly occupied the minds of theologians through the centuries, because the history of the church is littered with many bodies that have claimed to be churches, but have so drifted from their moorings in Scripture that they are no...