The virtue of slowness in ministry
Dan Steel
Date posted: 15 Dec 2025
In today’s fast-paced world, where productivity usually reigns supreme, the notion of slowness - or of slowing down - can seem countercultural. However, in pastoral ministry, slowness is not a weakness; it is an essential virtue.
Jesus often used agricultural metaphors to explain the Kingdom, not simply because that resonated with the people of His time (though it would have) but also because it explains something of how God is slowly at work in His world; tiny mustard seeds grow into huge trees.
defending our faith
Archaeology is really going down the drain
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 15 Dec 2025
Tony Robinson, the Time Team presenter, wrote a book called Archaeology is Rubbish. He wasn’t disowning the discipline that had given him a career after Blackadder. He was making the observation that most of the artefacts pulled out of the earth are the debris and detritus left behind by those who have gone before us.
That’s why drains and dumps are treasure troves for archaeologists. A recently announced broken piece of rubble from just such a drain in Jerusalem may be the find of 2025 for Bible archaeology!
Why is being a pastor ‘a noble task’? Could you be one?
Alasdair Paine
Date posted: 14 Dec 2025
In December 1926, a 27-year-old doctor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, left a London medical career in which he was making stellar progress to become pastor of a small church in a steelmaking town in South Wales. His move provoked public astonishment, even reaching the papers. Headlines included this: “Leading Doctor Turns Pastor: Large Income Given Up for £300 a year.”
One result of his move was that he was sometimes asked to give his testimony about the sacrifice he had made. He always refused. On one such occasion, he said: “I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honour that God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel.”1
'Prisoner 951': Hope amid horror in Iran
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 11 Dec 2025
If the Christmas season is leaving you feeling like you’ve overdone it on festive-themed, saccharine-filled shows, and you want something with more substance, then the BBC has just the thing for you.
Prisoner 951 is a four-part drama based on the upcoming book A Yard of Sky, dramatizing the harrowing six-year struggle to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and allow her to return to the UK from Iran.
Music for the last moments of life
Andrew Drury
Date posted: 9 Dec 2025
In the midst of our sadness, when we sit beside a dying person, we encourage the person, and ourselves, with the words of hymns and songs that point the way to heaven and the inheritance that we have in the Lord.
Music not only alleviates distress, calming the soul and giving a sense of normalcy [1] but, for the Christian, it also points the way to heaven and, more importantly, to our Saviour.
everyday theology
Are we people of a sect or of the gospel?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 9 Dec 2025
In practice, evangelicals have often tended to be individualists in their faith. But our understanding of what it is to be truly evangelical should be taken not from evangelical practice but from the evangel.
Evangelicals are people who have been born again, but to be born again is to be born or baptised into Christ (Rom. 6v3; Gal. 3v27). From the moment of our regeneration, we are part of a bigger whole, the body of Christ (Rom. 12v5; 1 Cor. 12v13).
Rooted shepherds: A vision for healthy pastoral ministry
Dan Steel
Date posted: 8 Dec 2025
In a busy, bustling world, healthy pastoral ministry begins not with motion, but with a kind of stillness, an abiding, a willingness to dwell where God has placed you, even when your heart feels tired or stretched thin.
Many pastors and ministry leaders quietly carry the weight of wondering whether they should be doing more, producing more, or moving on to something larger. Yet the gospel’s invitation is gentler than that.
engaging with culture today
Honouring human creativity in an age of AI
Becca Nunes
Date posted: 8 Dec 2025
I noticed a young artist’s face drop as she watched the projected AI-generated animation playing at the front of the church. It was a quick, fun animation made as part of a children’s talk. Most people hadn’t noticed it was AI, but the subtle tells were clear to anyone familiar with image creation.
AI-generated images and videos are increasingly appearing in our social media feeds, in advertisements, education, publishing and media – and now, it seems, even in our churches. And while we discuss how much ChatGPT should shape sermons or Bible studies, the use of AI in the artwork and design we use is often overlooked. It makes sense – when budgets are tight and time short, it’s tempting to use a tool that can turn a prompt into an image in moments. But what do we lose when we are too quick to do this?
What is faithful church ministry?
James Burnett
Date posted: 7 Dec 2025
Would you make a good "Traitor"? Have you got the mojo of a chameleon to hoodwink fellow contestants, like the comedian Alan Carr - this year’s winner of BBC’s The Celebrity Traitors?
Game show The Traitors was inspired by the sinking of the Dutch ship Batavia in 1629. When the Batavia sank off Australia, 250 survivors scrambled ashore an island archipelago. Mutinous traitors fought against a small band of faithful soldiers, culminating in a live-or-die boat race towards an oncoming rescue ship. Who would get there first - the "Traitors" or the "Faithful"? A true story!
The Biblical call to 'submit to authority' - and what that looks like
Tim Vasby-Burnie
Date posted: 5 Dec 2025
We should follow Jesus Christ in such a way that our lives cause people to talk about us, and in such a way that our lives silence that talk.
Peter assumes that the church, built on the foundation that is Jesus Christ – rejected by man but chosen by God - will be a people who are often rejected by those around us.
Isaac and Rebekah: Narrative 'nesting' in Genesis 24
Stephen Moore
Date posted: 5 Dec 2025
It is a remarkable thing about the book of Genesis that it tells universal history by means of particulars – the small details.
"And before he had finished speaking, out came Rebekah – who had been borne to Bethuel son of Milcah the wife of Nahor the brother of Abraham – and her water jar was upon her shoulder. Now the young woman was very beautiful, a virgin whom no man had known. And she went down to the well and filled her water jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, ‘Let me gulp a little water from your water jar’, and she said ‘Drink, my lord’ then hastily brought her water jar down onto her hand and gave him a drink. And when she had finished giving him a drink she said, ‘For your camels too I will draw water until they’ve finished drinking" (Genesis 24v15-19).
Do you see how far you've come?
Graeme Shanks
Date posted: 5 Dec 2025
It’s a testing time of year for many of us. I mean that quite literally.
If you’re at school, you’ll soon receive an end of term report card. If you’re a student, you’ll likely have upcoming exams. If you’re a worker, you’ll likely have an annual review looming on the horizon. Our daily lives are full of metrics by which success is measured and goals are set. Have we progressed or regressed?
To all music leaders...
Ben Slee
Date posted: 4 Dec 2025
Dear Music Leader,
From time to time, we all need encouragement in our ministry of leading sung worship for God’s people. Perhaps you feel that acutely during this Christmas season with additional services, keen awareness of our limitations and the weighty longing for those we lead to encounter Christ. Here are three reminders from the Scriptures of how God is at work to encourage you:
How to make festivities accessible - for all
Kay Morgan-Gurr
Date posted: 3 Dec 2025
Christmas is coming, and it’s looming fast! It’s also a time when those with disabilities and additional needs struggle with accessibility.
We love everything glittery, and twinkly. We cram everyone into whatever space we have. The noise is much greater. And we insist on colour combinations and fonts that should never get past the editing stage of our Christmas invites, slides on screens and our social media.
everyday evangelism
‘Tis the season to be… invitational!’
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 3 Dec 2025
When Paul charged Timothy to preach the word in season and out of season, he wasn’t referring to the calendar or the climate. Rather, that we experience times of openness to the Bible’s message, as well as periods of stubborn resistance. Timothy was to press on, in both “seasons”.
The Christmas “season” annually generates gospel opportunities that we would be foolish to miss though. The church is like a striker facing an open goalmouth, on the six-yard line, with the goalie nowhere in sight! In every church or CU I have ever been part of, in England or Scotland, people from outside the fellowship have accepted invitations to Christmas events, like carol or watchnight services. Christmas does seem to be “in season” – every year.
What a Christlike identity means for a Christian cricketer
Graham Daniels
Date posted: 2 Dec 2025
As the English side prepares to walk out at The Gabba for the second Test match in the Ashes series in Australia, the echoes of Perth (the location of the first Test match) still ring in many minds.
The first Test left wounds: batting collapses, public disappointment, confidence shaken. But for the Christian in the dressing room — and for those of us watching with faith — this moment carries deeper significance.
pastoral care
When those ungodly emotions return
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 2 Dec 2025
As the winter nights draw in, the log burner in our house gets used a little more. In the evenings, the flames dance – towards the end of the night, they diminish – soon there are just embers to be seen – eventually the fire goes out. Sometimes, however, that is not the end of the story. Sometimes – seemingly out of nowhere – the flames revive, and they can be fierce.
Some of us will know something similar in our sanctification. Something happens – our ungodly emotions or words run hot – but, with prayer and a Bible-centred pursuit of change, we become more like Christ. Sometimes the ungodly emotions feel as if they have disappeared; it feels like a victory has been won, but then they seem to re-emerge in a flash. Anger ignites, reviving hurts from the past; jealousy overwhelms as an unwanted memory pops up. Something we thought was long dealt with comes rushing back.
history
O Come, All Ye Faithful
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Dec 2025
Many of us will sing these marvellous words this Christmas from the carol O Come, All Ye Faithful, that was first printed in English in 1751: “God of God, Light of Light, Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb; Very God, Begotten not created.”
The first and third lines of this stanza, the second in the hymn, are clearly dependent upon the wording of the creedal statement issued by the Council of Nicaea (325). They bear witness to the ongoing significance of this turning-point in the history of the church.
