2024-04-18 16:31
I was recently invited to speak about the topic of Relational Discipleship which suggests there might be another sort which isn’t, anyway as I thought about it I realised there are a n… Read More
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Sometimes things take a long time to come to fruition. It was more than two years since Mike Betts and I began talking about a book that would try to capture
2024-04-17 08:09
Our church rents one of our meeting venues from another church in the central part of the city. When we meet, downstairs in the basement level a French-speaking Congolese church is also meet… Read More
2024-04-09 07:26
Not so long ago Joe Barnard gave Five Reasons to Reconsider Infant Baptism. The first point he argued was that, ‘the Children of Believers Are “Holy”’. Here’s h… Read More
2024-04-07 06:09
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they… Read More
2024-04-06 07:04
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they… Read More
2024-04-05 06:03
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they are always… Read More
2024-04-04 06:56
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they are always… Read More
2024-04-03 06:51
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they are always… Read More
2024-04-02 06:50
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they are always… Read More
2024-04-01 14:43
During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they are always… Read More
2024-03-20 17:15
According to Nick Cave & Sean O’Hagan that would be organized religion. I think that needs breaking down a little bit because nothing gets to be a religion without getting its act… Read More
2024-03-18 16:15
This morning, a Monday, I did what I almost always do on a Monday morning, and went for a long run (anything over 15km counts as a long run for me). Sometimes it’s with my friend Erik… Read More
2024-03-10 08:49
When the preaching team consisted mostly of me, myself and I, this is something I never really did. Then as the team grew and our desire to find ways to involve the congregation in the what… Read More
2024-03-06 21:03
Consider the following. Someone comes up to Jesus and asks Jesus to tell his brother to divide the inheritance with him (Luke 12:13-21). This suggests he is a younger son who feels his… Read More
2024-03-05 12:20
There was much celebrating among Christians in America when on 24th June 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and returned decisions regarding abortion from the federal government to… Read More
2024-03-04 18:56
This is a claim I’ve made before (lots of times in fact) but this time it was made by someone else. The challenging thing about this issue is that you (and me) as individuals have litt… Read More
2024-02-27 13:15
I’ve opted for the ‘WYSIWYG’ approach with this headline, nothing fancy so here we go. Here are all eight.
Truth
This one is really important and is the basis for Chr… Read More
2024-02-23 13:25
Everyone agrees that children are a blessing from the Lord. Church leaders know that having children in the church is a key sign of life and vitality; families attract families. For church p… Read More
2024-02-22 16:01
Of all the things to be complimented on, being praised for just still being there is something of an odd one. You are being congratulated not for succeeding, or for excellence, but for not h… Read More
2024-02-21 18:41
How would you answer that question? I think as a religious person, I instinctively think that the things I do, do in fact matter. But if in fact the universe is a cold and mostly empty place… Read More
2024-02-09 15:40
I’m fairly confident that most churches would in some way want to call themselves a ‘New Testament church’, because there really shouldn’t be any other sort. But… Read More
2024-02-08 17:33
I found this post in my draft folder and decided I would go ahead and just publish it. I’m aware of the issues that surrounded Timmis in particular, and the resulting fallout of the le… Read More
2024-02-07 10:37
Living in Stockholm for the past 12 years has consistently exposed me to questions of migration, immigration, asylum and refugees. Let me give you a few examples.
A Syrian family living i… Read More
2024-01-31 11:13
In Acts 6 the growing church in Jerusalem has a problem. The Hebrew Christians were neglecting the Hellenist widows in the daily distribution of food. Worth noting that this church had a dai… Read More
2024-01-30 15:38
A few years back I gave five reasons why war is more not less likely (also here) in the coming years and nothing has changed since then to make me think otherwise. Quite the opposite. In fac… Read More
2024-01-29 14:15
Few people have paid closer attention to the words, claims & actions of trans-activists than Helen Joyce (she’s even written a book 1 on it). She’s not alone, of course, in s… Read More
2024-01-25 08:06
For a Christian, that the Bible teaches something is the grounds for doing it. If you can see the pattern throughout Scripture, repeated and upheld in both Old & New Testaments then that… Read More
2024-01-24 07:42
The emperor Xerxes was the most powerful man in the world. Ruler of (at the time) the largest empire the world had ever seen, he could command massive armies and the destiny of every one of… Read More
2024-01-23 07:50
I’ll start with a confession. I’m terrible at vision statements. I don’t like them, I constantly change them and I’m not sure we need them. I get confused between vis… Read More
2024-01-22 07:36
I’m always on the lookout for good devotional resources, things that will fuel my soul and engage my heart. In that spirit I thought I’d share the books, apps and websites that I… Read More
2024-01-17 13:29
I love baptisms, they are right up there among the top things I love about my job. It is the gospel on display and yesterday we had the joy of baptising 8 people (7 from Congo and 1 from Swe… Read More
2024-01-17 08:44
There are from a Christian perspective significant ethical issues with assisted donor conception i.e. surrogacy, sperm & egg donation etc. There are serious doubts about whether third-pa… Read More
2024-01-16 08:09
Here’s Stanley Haeurwas’ answer to the question, ‘How do we learn to speak the truth to each other about marriage, about singleness, about sexuality?’
The first t… Read More
2024-01-15 16:03
I find myself saving a lot of posts and articles to read later. Inevitably a number of them are posts on a single theme, so I share them here as a occasional collections. Today’s theme… Read More
2024-01-12 10:54
This plan for an ultra-luxury upside down skyscraper inside a mountain is completely bonkers. It sounds like the brief to the architects was ‘please could you design something a Bond-v… Read More
2024-01-10 16:37
I enjoy preaching and most of the time I enjoy preparing sermons. I have, however, always found preparing a preaching schedule a stressful activity.
I remember coming home from living in… Read More
2024-01-08 17:13
I suspect that a week into 2024 you may have moved on from this kind of post, but that’s usually the problem isn’t it. These questions are from Donald Whitney and they are well w… Read More
2024-01-05 15:40
Two quotes that hit home. The first from Harvey Kwiyani.
Yet, such is the God that many other Christians worship, especially in the post-Enlightenment West. Many people profess to follow… Read More
2024-01-04 13:18
On Christmas Eve we invited a few people from elsewhere to come and have a meal with us after church. So there we were an African, two Indians, and a few Brits/Swedes and we began talking ab… Read More
2024-01-03 07:36
Some years ago I was in a long online back and forth with a feminist friend of mine about all things gender and at some point we got to the topic of children. She mentioned the patriarchy mo… Read More
2024-01-02 08:01
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9
Ralph Eldred works for a Christian trust, he… Read More
2024-01-01 12:57
Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse… Read More
2023-12-29 08:41
In addition to keeping a track of what I read, I also keep track of the films I watch. I find it a helpful exercise to see what sort of stuff I’m filling my head with or the heads… Read More
2023-12-28 07:53
Having spent a chunk of time compiling everyone else’s lists I thought I’d better get around to my own before the year runs away with me and the opportunity feels misse… Read More
2023-12-27 08:20
I read a lot of blogs by a lot of people who read a lot of books. At this time of the year it is the custom to do a census of all the books they have they read and then share that list with… Read More
2023-12-20 12:53
My parents write a family newsletter each Christmas and Dad sticks in a reflection before getting to the family news. This year’s struck me so I thought I’d share it (with permis… Read More
2023-12-19 16:40
I find myself saving a lot of posts and articles to read later. Inevitably a number of them are posts on a single theme, so I share them here as a occasional collections. Today’s theme… Read More
2023-12-14 07:16
When are a couple married and when are they just living together? The answer usually involves some kind of public ceremony that acknowledges the union. This ceremony could be entirely secula… Read More
2023-12-13 07:46
Next year at Grace Church we’ll do a short series on the book of Esther. As I’ve begun to research this book a number of things became immediately apparent which I don’t th… Read More
2023-12-06 14:54
I was recently asked to do a session on the topic of grace (90 minutes online) with a group of about 50 people who are serving a church for a year on the ID program. As most of them were you… Read More
2023-12-05 16:59
This week I came across, by accident, two different interpretations of the final scenes of Saving Private Ryan. One sees it as case of offering up salvation by works & the other sees it… Read More
2023-12-04 18:14
Glory be, two updates in three months! This counts as progress albeit from an admittedly very low (poor) starting point. So what’s been happening since I last updated you all.
Noah… Read More
2023-12-01 13:29
‘Africa is amazing’, ‘Everyone should visit Africa once in their life’, ‘Africa is a mess’, ‘Life is very cheap in Africa’.
I’ve hea… Read More
2023-12-01 13:29
‘Africa is amazing’, ‘Everyone should visit Africa once in their life’, ‘Africa is a mess’, ‘Life is very cheap in Africa’.
I’ve hea… Read More
2023-11-30 07:32
Yesterday I posted the seven pillars of egalitarianism taken from Stef Liston’s excellent book Gender Quality. So now it is time to see what he think the seven pillars of compleme… Read More
2023-11-29 07:23
In his excellent book Gender Quality Stef Liston outlines what he sees as the pillars of both egalitarian & complementarian arguments. It is, as we are regularly reminded, that we are un… Read More
2023-11-20 20:39
I thought I’d give you an insight into the various ways Sweden makes the news or catches the eye
The lifestyle
Fika, four-week holidays – and zero overtime: Sweden’s… Read More
2023-11-20 07:51
Recently there was quite a stir in the online religious world. Ayaan Hirsi Ali outed herself as a Christian. Which some noted as part of an emerging trend & others patronisingly tried to… Read More
2023-11-09 15:49
TGC Norden have just published my first article with them and it’s on the theme of hospitality. Here’s the intro and if that whets your appetite then you can read the whole thing… Read More
2023-11-08 14:18
In 1395, nearly 120 years before Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses against corruption in the Roman Church, a group known as the Lollards nailed their 12 Conclusions to the door of… Read More
2023-11-06 07:22
Last week I wrote about The Gospel Coalition Norden Conference, I was pleased not only to attend but to also take part. I shared a seminar with Carl Jan Christian Roth on Expository & Mi… Read More
2023-11-02 18:17
I’m almost at the end of a season of conferences (three down one to go) in about six weeks. This is not how I would plan it but the planners didn’t really ask me. Each had its st… Read More
2023-11-01 11:11
It’s been a while since I banged on about the growing threat from what has become the ever-present reality of nuclear weapons. I imagine for most of us nuclear weapons have been around… Read More
2023-10-18 07:31
When I was growing up in early 1980s Britain there was still something of a stigma attached to single-parent families. They were quite rare, they were talked about, something was considered… Read More
2023-10-02 14:55
I have been, over the years, historically bad at doing regular updates on life and ministry in Stockholm. Supporters of us, and what we do, I fear have been shortchanged. I have on a number… Read More
2023-09-27 16:31
What and how should Christians, and in particular, Christian leaders respond to the questions that power raises? Power is unavoidable but the use or misuse of it is not. In a previous post I… Read More
2023-09-21 07:57
I’ve been thinking about power (its uses and abuses) in church leadership recently, in the wake of the Mike Pilavachi debacle. While wrestling & massages will capture the headlines… Read More
2023-09-15 16:34
One of the intriguing things going on in social media at the moment is that some people are asking organisations, like Newfrontiers with whom I am associated, to take responsibility or even… Read More
2023-09-12 06:48
We live in a world of noise. There is always somebody making a statement about something. Always somebody ready to complain about the statement. Then there’s apologizing for the statem… Read More
2023-09-06 13:39
It’s an interesting question because any major trend that happens in the planet’s second most populous nation and second most powerful country may end up having global significan… Read More
2023-09-04 10:21
There are, I suspect, many good and possible answers to that question but when I think of these current times here in the secular West, I return again and again to one verse in Philippians… Read More
2023-09-01 09:11
This is the eighth in a series in a collaborative reading of Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4… Read More
2023-08-31 07:01
One of the most unhelpful stereotypes that we need to dispel is that Christianity is a Western faith. Is Syria western? Is Israel? Is Turkey? Is Ethiopia? The answer is of course no. And nor… Read More
2023-08-30 07:37
For once this is not a piece about exhaustingly negative leadership cultures but instead modernist brutalist architecture. Although I admit the Northern Lights cathedral is not brutalist but… Read More
2023-08-29 07:13
A summer of blogging neglect has led to a backlog of saved articles and as always this is my way of catching up. The theme of this post is sex and gender and there’s lots of interestin… Read More
2023-08-28 14:48
Philip Jenkins takes a look at recent article that wonders about whether the rest of the world will secularize in the way the West has and takes a look at my adopted country Sweden as a case… Read More
2023-08-14 14:13
The practice of infant baptism is not in the Bible. The theology supporting it might be but not the practice itself. By that I mean there is no description, mention or clear evidence of infa… Read More
2023-08-10 13:19
Last year, according to an ICAN report, the countries that have nuclear weapons spent $157,664 per minute on them. $82.9 billion is a lot to spend on something everyone says they’ll ne… Read More
2023-07-31 16:22
By now some of the novelty and hype about ChatGPT (and other LLMs) has died down somewhat but it’s not going anywhere and we need to get our heads around what to think about it. And, o… Read More
2023-07-21 10:26
It had been a few months since I’d consistently been able to run. A hamstring injury that I was too impatient to let heal properly had sidelined me for longer than I wanted. Now I was… Read More
2023-07-17 12:05
To get to the villages of the Greater Caucasus mountains in northern Georgia takes some effort. In the winter some of the roads are impassable and in the summer they are almost undriveable… Read More
2023-07-16 05:55
Hello. As a family we’ve just returned from a few weeks exploring Georgia and a little bit of Armenia. Ancient, beautiful, wonderful!
You should read these
Seven articles (plus a… Read More
2023-06-13 11:14
This is the seventh in a series in a collaborative reading of Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4… Read More
2023-06-11 09:15
What do you hope for? What are you looking forward to? If you could design the future what would it look like? It is something unique to humans (as far as we know) that we can both reflect o… Read More
2023-06-08 07:36
In a fascinating article over at Fairer Disputations, Louise Perry engages with the economist Bryan Caplan over the definition of feminism.
First the standard definition of feminism: &ld&hell…Read More
2023-06-07 07:15
I recently picked up the point made by Harvey Kwiyani that the future of European Christianity may, to a fair extent, lie in the hands of third-culture kids from Africa, Asia & Latin Ame… Read More
2023-06-05 06:21
One more post from the NS Lyons interview here.
I think are three urgent theology-related questions (here we are again with urgent theology) that it seems to no longer be very articulate… Read More
2023-06-03 07:35
Hello. Welcome to another weekend. Hope something here sparks your interest.
You should read these
Seven articles (plus a few sneaky bonuses) that might be worth you bookmarking, readi… Read More
2023-06-01 10:30
There are a growing number of people, on all sides of the political spectrum, who are convinced that western civilisation is in crisis. What seemed settled is in turmoil. Everything we thoug… Read More
2023-05-31 07:02
According to Harvey Kwiyani it is second generation migrant kids:
From where I stand, it is very plausible that the future of Christianity and mission in Europe will depend, to… Read More
2023-05-30 15:57
Remember your leaders who have spoken God’s word to you. As you carefully observe the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith.
Heb 13:7 (CSB)
That’s the verse that comes… Read More
2023-05-29 17:54
Last week I started my first ever sabbatical. I’ve been in church leadership for over 20 years now so I guess it was due. And never having done this before I’m definitely figurin… Read More
2023-04-12 16:59
Recently I came across this new video from Tearfund, a UK based Christian charity ‘which partners with churches in more than 50 of the world’s poorest countries tackling poverty… Read More
2023-03-28 17:37
In the 1520s and 1530s Britain faced a great constitutional crisis. The fate and future of the kingdom hung in the balance because the King had no legitimate son & heir. So the King, Hen… Read More
2023-03-22 17:58
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives numerous examples of what he means by a greater righteousness than the one offered by the Pharisees & Scribes. His third example is divorce. I gues… Read More
2023-03-20 08:48
In theory all Christians are Spirit-something Christians. No Christian denies the work of the Spirit completely. Although my own experience of growing up in an evangelical free church left m… Read More
2023-03-17 12:13
In our church we have (currently) three different language services (Swedish, English & Swahili) and so that makes us a multi-lingual church. We are a multi-ethnic church & multicult… Read More
2023-03-09 10:19
I’m in good health but I’m getting close to 50 which means, and let’s make a huge assumption here that I live until I’m 100, that fairly soon I’ll have less lif… Read More
2023-03-07 12:14
It didn’t take me long as a blogger to realise that the posts that got the most attention were the ones where a fight was picked. Criticize someone and you’d see a spike in your… Read More
2023-02-25 07:24
Two days ago I shared some of our journey into becoming a church with 3 separate language services. Yesterday, Steve Kneale who also leads a church with multiple languages put his thoughts d… Read More
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