But if you don't want to ... this introduction is as smart as any ... he is, of course, quite right.

I don't want to talk about climate crisis as the first thing on the agenda, despite tonight's title.  I think that we're only going to be able to shape a robust and creative Christian response to this or any other of our current crises if we step back a bit and try to ...

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Good Friday
Friday 10th April 2009 @ 6:40 pm / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

This  photo show might help your own Good Friday reflection if you can grab a few mins ......

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Willard
Friday 20th March 2009 @ 9:13 am / kingdom stuff / 1 comment

Just a quick quote of the day for you ... a bit of an additional response to some of the chat after the Calvin post a few days ago:

"Even in its ruined condition a human being is regarded by God as something immensely worth saving. Sin does not make you worthless, but only lost."

Dallas Willard in The Renovation of the Heart

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Devastating
Tuesday 10th March 2009 @ 10:20 am / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

Even far from home I feel some dispair at the news coming from the land I grew up in and love.

The murders of Sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, Patrick Azimkar, 21, from London,  shot dead at Massereene Army base, Antrim on Sunday, and now ...

the brutal shooting & murder of Constable Stephen Carroll, 48 in Lismore Manor, Banbridge ...

these things bring me back to the first 22 years of my life. They remind me of the struggle to create a land at peace with itself. They remind me of the ...

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7 deadlies
Thursday 19th February 2009 @ 8:04 am / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

It's not fashionable to talk about sin these days ... and consequently many Christians have warped misplaced and guilt-ridden understandings of what sin is.

Essentially the biblical concept of sin is a missing the mark. The Greek word hamartia (?μαρτ?α) is usually translated as sin in the New Testament. In Classical Greek, it means "to miss the mark" or "to miss the target" which was also used in Old English archery.

One NT writer states ...

Only this much is plain, that when sin is contemplated as hamartia it is regarded as a failing and missing the true end and scope of our ...

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Real life
Sunday 15th February 2009 @ 10:39 pm / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

I am on the mailing list for Bart Campolo ... he sends emails that at times would make you squirm ... at other times challenge you beyond belief ... and other times, like this one, throw you an appreciation of people like him who really live what they say. He currently lives in an inner city neighbourhood in Cincinati - doing what he calls the rest of us too. 

This is a story from his last epistle ...

My friend Freemont, on the other hand, wastes few words.  Big and burly, he was deep in the drug game until a few years ...

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waterloo
Friday 13th February 2009 @ 12:45 pm / kingdom stuff / 2 comments

I've been taken by surprise ... not least of all because I never thought my affection for a tough secondary school could ever surpass the affection for that old school of my pre-minister days, Dunclug in Ballymena. Those were the days, literally just before I started blogging, I shudder to think what I might have talked about had I been blogging in those days!!!

My days in Dunclug (6months of them) were some of the most tiring, tedious, challenging, frustrating, rewarding and eye-opening I have ever known. I am so glad I had the opportunity to be there. It was ...

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An old one refound ...
Tuesday 13th January 2009 @ 11:19 am / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

I recently found this story of Tony Campolo's in an old file, and thought it worth posting afresh ...

Tony Campolo tells about the first funeral he attended at Mount Carmel when he was twenty years old.

Clarence, a college friend of his, had been killed in a subway-train accident. At the beginning of the service, says Tony Campolo, the pastor brilliantly expounded upon what the Bible says about the promise of the resurrection and the joys of being with Christ. Then he came down from the platform and went over to the right side of the sanctuary, where ...

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A treat ...
Friday 9th January 2009 @ 8:08 am / kingdom stuff / 1 comment

Last weekend I had some good friends stay for the weekend. In turn, as is my own wee style, I asked them to deliever a children's talk in church on Sunday morning ... and they wrote the following story ... I love it, I think you will too ... 

Thanks stevo & spence ... a pleasure as always.

On Nicholl’s farm there lived some turkeys. They lived a quiet, satisfied life gobbling to each other and eating grain. But every November an odd anxiety would descend on the turkey pen, as farmer Jeremy was seen cleaning his gun.

One turkey ...

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A Christmas prayer
Wednesday 24th December 2008 @ 3:27 pm / kingdom stuff / 1 comment

A very dear friend sent me an unusual request - one which was more than a pleasure to help with ...

Without going into the details, I was asked to provide a prayer for people who for one reason ro another may not be able to make it to church this Christmas - either today or tomorrow. My friend wanted to help her friends celebrate christmas by providing words for them to pray - knowing that in their individual separations and battles this Christmas, they would still share in worship together ...

... a beautiful image of the incarnation.

So here is the ...

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politically speaking ...
Sunday 14th December 2008 @ 11:22 am / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

Good bishop virutal methodist writes a lot on the politics of NI, as he has recently done once more here ... they are always interesting posts and keep my mind ticking over what I have moved away from.

And therein lies the surprise for me ... I don't think I knew that moving two hours down the road from Belfast, (and one hour down the road from Northern Ireland) would change the news quite so much. It's not as if I never came to Dublin before! But in so many ways it really is a different  world.

Politically?

Well - politically ...

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starbucks church ...
Friday 12th December 2008 @ 12:15 pm / kingdom stuff / 0 comments

Special thanks to seller extraordinaire ESamuel for the point toward this ...

You may have seen it, I hadn't!