Get me to the church on time – or not...
Oliver Rice
Date posted: 20 Mar 2025
“The trouble with punctuality is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.”
Does your church have a problem with punctuality? If it does, does it really matter if people don’t arrive in time for the beginning of the service? After all, there is no direct command in the Bible to “be punctual” or “be on time”, and it is not one of the nine “fruit of the Spirit” qualities in Galatians 5:22,23. Perhaps it is not very important after all, and we should all be quite relaxed about people arriving late.
Church planting is a team effort, not a competition
Dan Steel
Date posted: 17 Mar 2025
My kids always beat me at Risk. You know, the classic board game of world domination where you expand your territory, crush your opponents, and inevitably spark family arguments?!
Church planting can sometimes be portrayed as a game of Risk. Different networks and denominations rush to plant their flag in 'strategic' towns and cities — sometimes without considering whether healthy churches from other networks are already thriving there. While this may be a slight ‘straw-man’, there is sadly some truth to it (according to my study, just over 1/5 spoke of vision 'issues' between their network and the ground-level reality of what was needed).
Ten questions with: Darren Moore
en staff
Date posted: 10 Mar 2025
Darren Moore is the minister of Chelmsford Presbyterian Church and is a native-born Essex boy!
He is a trustee at European Missionary Fellowship (EMF) and a contributor on Gospel Reformation. He is married to Glad and father of Josiah.
Three tips for leading congregational worship
Ben Slee
Date posted: 10 Mar 2025
How can we prepare well to lead congregational worship?
Someone asked me that recently, and after some prayer and reflection here’s where I got to:
How I have changed my view on singleness
Rani Joshi
Date posted: 10 Mar 2025
Does it matter that I am brown and single? Growing up, marriage was always the goal of any South Asian parent for their child or children – to know they were settled. Society and culture seemed to suggest that life’s milestones should include marriage and then children.
As a young teenager, I too believed this was the way because it was ingrained in me culturally, but when life doesn’t work out like that, where does my hope lie – or that of the other 40% of UK adults who are single?
Best books for kids on body image
Catherine MacKenzie
Date posted: 8 Mar 2025
Here are a few books that teach children how to appreciate God and their bodies.
God Made Me by Una Macleod (ISBN: 978 1 857 922 899). This is a great first-word book. With bright colours and simple words. Something to shove in your nappy bag or the pram.
earth watch
How ‘nigh’ really is the end of the world?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 7 Mar 2025
Well, there you have it! The numbers are in! The award for the hottest year on record goes to… 2024! Beating previous award-winning 2023, it racked up an impressive 1.6 degrees hotter than the pre-industrial average. In fact, the world’s been on a record-breaking streak for some time now: the top ten hottest years occurred in, well, the last ten years.
But we won’t just look back on 2024 as yet another record-breaking year in a long run of unwelcome records. We’ll look back on it as the first year our world breached 1.5 degrees, the so-called ‘safe limit’ of heating.
God is using migration to fulfil His mission
Chris Howles
Date posted: 6 Mar 2025
There can be few topics more likely to canvass votes, generate clicks, or provoke vigorous and sometimes heated discussions than that of international migration in the world today.
And perhaps for good reason, for not many people or places are unaffected by this issue. Indeed some already speculate that the 21st century will in time be known as ‘The Century of Migration’.
helping children find faith
Have children’s exam grades become our god?
Ed Drew
Date posted: 5 Mar 2025
I will always remember one particular moment as one of my children approached GCSEs. My child was in tears, screaming at me: ‘I am going to fail all of them.’ This was not the first time this had happened.
Previously, I had said things like ‘You won’t’ and ‘You can only do your best.’ No previous answer had improved the situation. The panic and the fear continued. This time, I decided that I had a better, Christian answer to give. ‘And that would be alright.’
everyday theology
The good life in Christ: rejoicing in suffering
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 5 Mar 2025
Is ‘the good life’ a life without suffering? Ease and prosperity in and of themselves are not really what make up the good life. Christ Himself was made like His weak and tempted brothers in order that He might help those who are tempted (Heb.2:16-18), and in the same manner, it is weak and suffering people that God has chosen to minister to the weak and suffering.
The great Refiner uses the days of small things. He uses the setbacks and discouragements, and even severe suffering, for our ultimate blessing. He did just that at the cross: it was through that darkest and most discouraging day that He definitively overturned and defeated the very root of darkness and suffering. Through that death He defeated death; through our comparatively light sufferings He is able to defeat our selfish independence and our foolish wandering and to make us more like His free and victorious Son. For those who have even glimpsed the unfettered beauty of Jesus, that thought itself puts mettle in our joy.
history
What do we make of relics?
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 4 Mar 2025
Recently, the skull of Thomas Aquinas (1225‒1274), one of the most significant theologians of the medieval era, was on tour throughout the United States in a brand-new reliquary. Those who promoted this tour were convinced that viewing a relic like this one helps to draw you closer to God.
The origin of such a conviction goes back to the millennium that we commonly denote as the Middle Ages. So important and so powerful were such relics – usually reputed body parts of those regarded to have lived exemplary holy lives, ‘the saints’ – during this era that it has been aptly described as a thousand years of the veneration of these objects.
pastoral care
Getting to grips with trauma
Steve Midgely
Date posted: 3 Mar 2025
Every now and again in pastoral ministry we come across something unfamiliar. And in such circumstances our response, sometimes, is simply to retreat.
Partly that might be driven by a godly concern that, out of ignorance, we will say or do something that proves unhelpful. There may also be elements of a concern that is rather less godly – that of appearing ignorant or looking foolish.
the ENd word
Our ‘little pink mouth blob’!
Lizzy Smallwood
Date posted: 2 Mar 2025
Winston Churchill once said: ‘We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.’
In this column, as we’ve looked at Respectable Sins in the Letter of James, he has challenged how we use our mouths too much and our ears and hands too little. He then goes in for the kill in Chapter 3 – that whopping respectable sin – how we misuse our tongues.
defending our faith
A tiny discovery with a dramatic impact on Biblical studies
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Mar 2025
One of the most interesting Israeli archaeologists you could meet is Gabriel Barkay. His archaeological career spans the history of modern Israel. As a Jew born in the Hungarian ghetto, he was within a week of being sent to a Nazi death camp.
Instead, he survived the war and emigrated to the fledgling state of Israel at the age of six. Growing up in Jerusalem with an enthusiasm for archaeology, Barkay’s knowledge of the history of the city is second to none. He became a specialist in ancient burial practices and discovered many of the Biblical period tombs around Jerusalem. Barkay carried out an archaeological survey of the famous ‘Garden Tomb’ (dating it to the eighth or seventh century BC).
safeguarding briefing
Safeguarding – it’s time for a critical conversation
Jules Loveland
Date posted: 28 Feb 2025
The news of Archbishop Justin Welby’s resignation at the end of last year sent ripples across the wider church. The news broke in the week leading up to Safeguarding Sunday where thousands of UK churches had already planned to shine a spotlight on the very issues that led to his resignation.
For some, the resignation was welcome news, for others it has raised concerns. But perhaps we can all agree that the safeguarding issues that have come to light are devastating, and we pray for all victims and survivors seeking healing and justice.
Is sinful desire itself sin? A debate on temptation
Matthew Roberts & John Stevens
Date posted: 28 Feb 2025
When we find ourselves wanting to sin, is that something which we should repent of, confess to God, and ask forgiveness for? Or is that only necessary if we give in to that desire? What does this have to do with our temptations, and Christ’s?
The issue of concupiscence – another name for ‘sinful desire’ or ‘lust’ – has become a matter of controversy recently, partly because of its relevance to sexual sin and the question of LGBTQ+ ‘identities’, though its implications are much wider. Here, John Stevens and Matthew Roberts argue for two different views, and each responds to the other.
