Falling With Style

In a little under 8 weeks time we will have been married for 20 years! Years in which we've grown up together, remained best friends and learned how to flourish in a monogamous, exclusive relationship within a culture that is sex soaked and promiscuous. In preparing to teach on marriage this weekend, I'm stunned by how counter culture real marriage actually is. What a statement it makes. We just thought it was normal, we're not expecting a medal for getting half way - but increasingly such a secure and happy relationship stands out like a beacon against a dark sky. It's profoundly counter cultural for me to say: 'I give myself to her, to serve her, to cause her to shine, to think about her first over myself and my needs, to create more little people like us with her,to learn to handle trouble and hardship with her, to have my character shaped over years with her and by her. To unlearn everything the world has taught me about sex, lust and self gratification and ...

It's the old cliche about a good book, but with Noah Hawley's 'The Good Father', I really couldn't put it down! It's easy to say what the book is about, the story of estrangement between a father and his grown up son, a relationship broken since divorce years before, now brought into the spotlight through the unexpected murder of an up and coming Senator by the lost boy. The information about the plot is not enough though, it's a book you have to feel. The sudden reordering of the Father's emotional world is shattering, his intense introspection and the impact on his new family heartbreaking. It reads like a thriller, at times with a touch of Grisham's legal procedure, mixed with big widescreen vista roadtrip descriptions of small town America. The truth as it begins to emerge is hard to swallow and you are left googling to see if this novel is really a true story. What is most striking is the ordinariness of the lives of this family. They look...

The missionary movement has progressed in thinking and strategy over the last few centuries. Moving from a territorial idea – missionaries connected to trade routes and coastal areas in the previously unreached areas of India, China and Africa – to a later movement that saw daring groups push inland to the undiscovered interiors. China Inland Mission was a case in point. The emphasis towards the end of the last century was to recognise the need to reach more than just the land, but people groups with the gospel. Simply establishing church bases in a nation was never the goal. Seeing the gospel communicated and rooted in the local populations through discipleship is the greater aim. The big promise of the bible concerns this kind of discipleship to the ends of the earth. The colourful descriptions of Revelation show a huge number of disciples of Jesus, coming from every tribe, tongue and nation. In other words, from every people group that has developed on planet earth. In the here...

There is now an assumption amongst Christians that the prevailing culture is either the enemy : So we fight against it and talk of eroding rights and standards as with the BA discrimination case yesterday. Or the alternative is that we make our modern culture the primary reference point and reinterpret our theology in the light of this, getting shaped by and submerged in culture: Like Steve Chalke appears to have done with his developing views on homosexuality. Neither extreme is appropriate or necessary, but a polarisation amongst believers has occurred. Since words like ‘contextualisation’ and ‘ecumenicalism’ entered our vocabulary 40 years ago we have begun to move in opposing directions which now see us split down pretty well defined lines of evangelical and liberal. Strangely enough, the Evangelicals amongst us often find ourselves in closer accord with the Orthodox(again, as with the Coptic Christian and BA),than with the liberal. The scriptures don’t require a leaning in e...

I've enjoyed reading books by the magnificently named Dutch Sheets, and the even more unlikely Preston Sprinkle this week! We just don't make names like that in the UK. My favourite quote of the week comes from a proper, solid, sensible British name, Richard Foster. His classic on Prayer is every bit as worth reading as Dutch Sheets. Both will get you out from under the sheets earlier in the morning and onto your knees. Writing of the Lord's prayer, Foster says: " For sheer power and majesty, no prayer can equal the Paternoster....it really is a total prayer. Its concerns embrace the whole world, from the coming of the kingdom, to daily bread. It is lifted up to God in every conceivable setting. It rises from the altars of the great cathedrals and from obscure shanties in unknown places. It is spoken by both children and kings. It is prayed at weddings and death beds alike. The rich and poor, the intelligent and illiterate, the simple and the wise - all speak thi...

Here is the annual award for my book of the year. It is totally subjective, based on my own peculiar reading habits. Last years Book of the Year was deservedly taken by 'The Case for Working with your hands, or why office work is bad for us and fixing things feels good' by Matthew Crawford. The long title alone gives it kudos - but the book is even better than the title! I've read lots of great fiction this year, and an honourable mention goes to the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Just because something is a mainstream bestseller for teens and gets a movie franchise doesn't make it bad fiction - don't be a book snob! I also really enjoyed reading Brother Andrew's 'God's Smuggler' again, 25 years on from the first time. If there was a golden raspberry award it would go to 'Last Train from Liguria - Christine Hickey. I persevered for a couple of hundred pages but was so bored waiting for something to happen in her depressing world...

I’ve been searching for the best Christmas joke and I can’t decide. The best ones are either so bad that they belong in a Christmas Cracker, or so old that we all mouth the words together and recite the punchline before it’s delivered. So here, in no particular order of preference are my current favourite Christmas one liners (apart from No5 which is a three liner, but I like the shuddering literalism of it!) 1/Q: What do you call Frosty the Snowman in May? A: A puddle! 2/Q: Who hides in the bakery at Christmas? A: A mince spy! 3/What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus? Claustrophobic. 4/It just wouldn’t be Christmas without M&S. It would just be Chrita. 5/It was Christmas Eve in a supermarket and a woman was anxiously picking over the last few remaining turkeys in the hope of finding a large one. In desperation she called over a shop assistant and said "Excuse me. Do these turkeys get any bigger?" "No" he replied...