Google’s Ngram Viewer is a fun way to waste time online. You can search Google’s book database and discover how common a word’s usage has been over time.
If, for example, you searched for the word ‘depression’, you will see two peaks, one in 1934 and another in 2011. ‘Shell shock’ peaks in 1919. Type in the word ‘trauma’, and you will see its usage rise on a continual uphill graph from almost nothing in 1900; similar happens to the word ‘triggering’. The term PTSD rose from nothing in the 1970s to a sharp peak today.
It is the season when supermarkets and Ikea are filled with young adults and their parents doing ‘the university shop’.
Journalists begin rehashing their annual articles: '24 tips for starting university', filled with sage advice about starting freshers with plenty of cold remedies and bringing chocolate brownies to share with new housemates. Parents are advised to 'let go and remember that their child is an adult'.
‘What strengths do the younger generation have?’ The youngest person in the group asked this question in a meeting of church leaders, exasperated at the negative tone of the conversation. It was an appropriate rebuke in the middle of a discussion about the apparent reduction of younger people seeking to serve full-time in gospel ministry.
It is easy to feel despair at our times. Anyone who has read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation or Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy will be aware of the increase in diagnosed mental health issues among young people. Both books raise valuable matters we need to consider – issues around smartphone technology, outsourcing childhood to experts and counsellors, creating a climate of fear and anxiety among parents in the ‘real’ world, and yet ignoring exposure to harm in the ‘online’ world.
'Thin places' is a Celtic Christian term that describes areas where people feel the distance between heaven and earth collapse. Poets, writers and travellers make grand claims about the power of such spaces to transform us.
This summer, I found the perfect candidate for such a place in the North West of Scotland at the isolated Sandaig Bay, otherwise known as Gavin Maxwell's 'Camusfearna' in his book The Ring of Bright Water.
Numbers are down. This is a nationwide observation about people applying for ministry apprenticeships, training courses, and responses to church job adverts. The question is frequently asked: ‘Where are the next generation of leaders for the church in the UK?’
We have never had more access to gospel resources: courses, online teaching, excellent conferences, and sermons downloadable at the touch of a button, so why are we not producing disciples who are ready to take on more responsibility, try new ministries, or move to other parts of the country to spread the gospel? Why do so many want to stay in the safety of their known church family and not have the confidence to consider more radical alternatives?
I recently completed an admin task that I had never done before.
It was perhaps something that I should have done before, but no one had asked, and I hadn’t considered it necessary. I had managed to avoid it for 30 years. That is approximately the number of years my husband and I have led one Bible study group or another in our home. What was the task? A risk assessment for leading a church group in our home. Why, after all these years, are we now doing one? Because it was recommended as good practice at recent safeguarding training. Some of you reading this may be horrified by our previous lack of diligence, especially as we had four children at home during much of that time. Others of you may now be thinking that perhaps this is something you need to add to your to-do list.
When was the last time you heard the hymn ‘To be a Pilgrim’ by John Bunyan, or how about ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before!’?
Perhaps you don’t know them at all. These hymns, once classic school assembly songs for generations, haven’t made it into the 21st century. Their language is dated, but the sentiment shouldn’t be. They were a call for us to love Christ and to serve Him unashamedly, written as a call to discipleship and to ‘share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus’. I’m not sure we sing many hymns now which encourage risk-taking with such reckless abandonment.
Recent media coverage of the Royal Family has included concerns about racism, including one event at Buckingham Palace.
Lady-in-waiting Lady Hussey’s role had been to put guests at ease at a reception. Unfortunately, whatever her intentions, the opposite happened. There were also allegations from Prince Harry and Meghan about related areas. I’m not going to comment on those events which have received so much coverage and divided opinion. However, it makes me think about the difficulties we have trying to connect with one another.
Two corgis who belonged
to
the Queen, Sandy
and Muick, watched
her
funeral procession
and reduced our dog-loving nation to tears.
Since the Queen’s death,
sales of corgis have gone up. The Kennel Club
reports a 30-year high for the registration of
the breed. I expect a few more breeders will
seek to cash in on the craze, as puppies can
sell for around £6,000. So if you want a
puppy for Christmas, perhaps another breed
might be better. Remembering the seasonal
refrain, a dog is for
life and not
just for
Christmas. Corgis are still not as popular as
the UK’s favourite breed, which is, of course,
a Labrador. I admit it – I am a besotted
Labrador owner.
I recently found myself tagged in a lengthy Twitter discussion.
Megan Cornwell interviewed me for an article called ‘Is complementarian theology abusive’ for Premier Christianity. She posted a link, and the responses began. It was like watching a tennis match, a type of Twitter ping pong. Tweets passed backwards and forwards. The rallies were long. An accusation followed by a defence with a counterargument returned.
We live in unusual times. Job adverts have been carefully drafted and widely distributed, yet the deadline for applications comes and goes with no one expressing interest.
This scenario has been taking place up and down the country. Currently, there are record numbers of vacancies as firms struggle to recruit. We experience the outworking of this with scenes of airport chaos and rising NHS waiting lists. There are shortages across sectors, from probation officers and dental nurses to plasterers, construction workers, and the agriculture industry. Those wanting to learn to drive cannot find driving instructors or even book a test.
This year, there has been a stand-out new genre on streaming services: the scammer show.
These dramatic reconstructions of ‘fake it until you make it’ chart the rise and fall of charismatic individuals who persuaded people to depart with eye-watering sums of money. Among them, Inventing Anna is the story of the fake German heiress Anna Sorokin, WeCrashed tells of the Neumans who raised billions of dollars whilst running at a colossal loss and, in my opinion, the best, The Dropout charts the fall of the biotech company Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Jimmy Carr’s comedy is certainly not to everyone’s taste: he has built his career on telling risky one-liners.
In his Netflix show His Dark Materials (the clue is in the name), he played with the idea of career-ending jokes, and one such joke may have proved his point.
en continues to seek to provide a forum for us all to learn as broadly as possible from sinful and shameful abusive actions. Our foremost thoughts and prayers must be with the survivors and victims.
It is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The final straw is small; it barely weighs anything but, added to the burden already carried, it crushes.
I have found a new role model. A woman prepared to act against her family for the sake of the Lord and his people.
She used her abilities and the resources at her disposal to serve the Lord’s cause even at the risk of her own life. She is a little intimidating because she seemed so in control despite her vulnerability. Her nerve extended to extreme violence. She is Jael, and we read about her in the book of Judges.
If you want to waste time on the internet, put church names into the search engine of the Charity Commission and see how many ‘volunteers’ they have.
Lots of churches do what ours has done. The number of volunteers recorded is the size of the church family – it seems that everyone who belongs to the church is a ‘volunteer’.
Instead of hosting a party to celebrate her son’s tenth birthday Seema Misra was sent to prison. She was eight weeks pregnant.
What was her crime? She had run the village post office in West Byfleet, but had unaccountable shortfalls in her accounts. She put in £20,000 from her family savings to resolve the issue, but the problems continued and, eventually, she was convicted of stealing £74,000. The local newspaper described her as the ‘pregnant thief’. Her life was in tatters.
Have we lost confidence in the Bible?
Google’s Ngram Viewer is a fun way to waste time online. You can search Google’s book database and discover how common a word’s usage has been over time.
If, for example, you searched for the word ‘depression’, you will see two peaks, one in 1934 and another in 2011. ‘Shell shock’ peaks in 1919. Type in the word ‘trauma’, and you will see its usage rise on a continual uphill graph from almost nothing in 1900; similar happens to the word ‘triggering’. The term PTSD rose from nothing in the 1970s to a sharp peak today.