As a brief follow-up to yesterday's post on boring preachers, I have been asked whether or not I think 'boring' is too subjective a category to be useful and certainly to use as a basis for firing someone. I disagree with those who think the category too much a matter of personal taste to be useful...

Preaching on 1 Timothy 1:16-17 on Sunday, I was struck by a number of things. First, doctrine and worship go together. Doctrine may often seem a dry word but in fact it is simply the description of who God is and how he has acted. As Paul reflects in 1 Tim. 1 upon how God has dealt with him, his...

While browsing a bookshop in Geneva recently, I came across a book with a fascinating title by a man call Klaas Hendrikse, Believing in a God who does not exist: the manifesto of an atheist pastor. It does not appear to be available in English but is available via Amazon here . Well, the Rev...

There is a very helpful and moving article in Christianity Today on the impact on children of a parental pornography habit. You can find it here .

If a man doesn't hesitate to use his parents' sex lives to get a cheap laugh and sell a few books, one should not be surprised if he sees yesterday's events in Norway as a great opportunity for puffing his own prophetic insights, trying to flog a few more copies of his own recent book and...

It was a relief to finish working through Judges last week. Preaching to a congregation which needs encouragement, I could think of more obvious books to choose than this one, especially when one considers the last four chapters. There one sees the corruption of family, of the priesthood, of a...

.... but you can't take the fundamentalism out of the boy. That was the point I made about Frank Schaeffer in his latest book. Apparently incapable of understanding with any degree of sympathy those who do not see the world as he does, he can only demonise them as `far right' and 'whackos' who are...

One question that has arrived in the Inbox as a result of yesterday's post on the difference between public figures and celebrities has interesting implications for preaching. The question is about the legitimacy of self-reference in sermons. The questioner gives the following reason for asking (...

A friend dropped me a note on Saturday to say, somewhat tongue in cheek, that I was becoming a celebrity by virtue of my anti-celebrity writing. I do not wish to prolong my anti-celebrity rants any more, having said all I really want to say on the subject; but at his suggestion I will make one...

Donatism is an early church heresy that seems to be making something of a comeback in the modern church. Put simply, in its original context, the debates about Donatism in the ancient church swirled around the issue of rebaptism for those who had fallen away and sacrificed to pagan gods during...

One of the things the non-Christian world does so relentlessly, and often rather accurately, is mock the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the church. Of course, the Bible does the same, as anyone who has read Judges or any of the prophets will know. The church at its best makes no bones about the...

I am working feverishly this summer on a short book commending creeds and confessions to evangelical friends whose desire to make sure the Bible rules supreme leads them to what I consider a misguided but sincere rejection of such documents in their church life. The book is in many ways a very...

One of the strange phenomena which blogs have perhaps not created but have certainly helped to propagate is the armchair reformer who mistakes opining about things for actually making a difference. I have been fascinated over the years to see the advice that is given to churches and to institutions...

I returned to preaching on Judges on Sunday, after a hiatus of a month. I made the decision in June that the dismemberment of the end of Judges 19 and the subsequent battle scenes of Judges 20 were not particularly apposite for a baptismal service and so used that time to start a new series on 1...

There is a fascinating article on multi-campus ministry in the latest Christianity Today. I will not bore readers with too much of my usual shtick about the celebrity/megachurch culture which seems to have engulfed even the Reformed wing of evangelicalism in the last five years. You should read the...

Monday was a hard day of video shooting in London. The footage of Paul's library, housed in the magnificent neo-Gothic building designed by Sir Montague Jewson, is available at the link on his post of yesterday. Sadly, however, I forgot to remove the lens cap while shooting the annual British...

What Paul has forgotten to mention in his argument for two handed blessing is the importance of the ministry of the Rev. Harry Powell on Levy's understanding of pastoral care. Here's a clip from one of the famous `How To Be A Both-Hands-On Pastor' videos that the Rev. Powell produced, this on the...

Over at The Gospel Coalition, various churchmen have been giving their views on preparation for pastoral succession. A couple of thoughts come to mind: the problem of preparing for a successor is inevitably more acute in some senses in a smaller church without the resources to have more than one...

A second area where there is a contemporary problem with calls to the ministry is the role of seminaries and theological training institutions. Of course, seminary education is a perennial point of discussion concerning its content, mode of delivery etc., but the issue I want to reflect on here is...

If the great need of this hour, as of every other, is preachers of the gospel, then it is surely worth while to reflect on a regular basis on the nature of, and qualifications for, a call to the ministry. I start with a quotation from Bishop Robinson -- no, not that one; rather Donald Robinson, the...

Today marks the passing of traveler, writer and adventurer Patrick Leigh Fermor. His obituary brought back memories. My father bought me his classic travel book, Between the Woods and the Water when it was published in 1986. It was his account of traveling across a Europe which was about to descend...

While The Daily Record is generally about as reliable and trustworthy in its judgments as an academic librarian at a Milan fashion show, it usually gets the scoop on anything sensational in Scotland. It currently carries the news that Dominic Smart, minister of Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen,...

Here is a thought-provoking quotation from John Henry Newman on the Athanasian Creed where he addresses the vulnerability of said creed to criticism by those who set theology and worship in opposition (no, that's not something of which the church was stupidly unaware until some soul-patched...

Here are two thought provoking paragraphs from Geoff Thomas's recent address at Westminster. No quotations from Alice Cooper but there is one from an even higher source, perhaps in honour of Bob's 70th. As GT said to me afterwards, `You never saw that coming, did you?' Aberystwyth is a small town...