Christian ministers frequently report bad backs and shoulders. Mine became so bad that I ended up in surgery at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital a few years ago. I’ve no idea if we deviate from the norm on this, but I’ve a hunch (I know, I know) that hours spent sitting reading as well as using
I remember the concert clearly. A well known Christian singer/songwriter had put together a string of his material to be able to present the gospel to non-Christian teens. He was very good – he’s a gifted speaker as well as a musician. And the kids responded well. But what I remember most vividly was the
Each Sunday I’m giving out handouts for the sermon, rather than just leaving an empty box (‘For your sermon notes’) on the church notice sheet. Why go to all the extra cost and effort? Here are my ten reasons: As a preacher: 1. It forces me to a point of clarity all the way through
I’d had more than enough of being an itinerant preacher. For the past dozen years or so I’ve been free of Sunday pastoral responsibilities (I’ve had family responsibilities, of course), and so I’ve tracked round the place helping out friends who were on their own and needed a visitor to say the same things in
Our church has big front doors, in that lots of people turn up quite unannounced. But we also have big back doors too – people leave, often without being noticed. So I want to make sure that journey is not a short one. I want to slow people down, and introduce them to church. I want to make our front doormat sticky.
To Wales, then, for a couple of conferences on church planting. Waleswide is an initiative of a range of evangelical churches, to establish the idea of Wales as a 21st century mission field. Those two sentences contain at least three ideas that should make us shake our heads in disbelief and wonder – and the reason
I once had a colleague who had a very talkative walk. As he came up the road you could tell what kind of meeting it as going to be, and for the next three hours his mood would dominate. His body language communicated everything we needed to know – and we worked it out from
