A Return To Blogging

I last blogged almost exactly three years ago. Three years of ministry, teaching, busyness and a fair amount of tragedy. When I have been writing it has been curricula, Masters teaching, sermons and co-authoring a book.

But for nearly a year the number of things I want to blog about has been building up. So I hope this is the start of more regular blogging again. The blog might well get a refresh soon but I want to start the writing before getting tied down in techy stuff.

So, first post here we come!

Is the Church a Safe Place to Bare Your Soul?

Is the church a safe place to lay bare your soul?

That is the question posed by my friend Tanya Marlow in a recent article on the PremierChristianity blog. You can read it here: http://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Can-you-wear-a-bikini-to-church.

She asks a number of uncomfortable questions: can I show my whole self here and still be loved? Which would you find more vulnerable - turning up to church dressed in swimwear or admitting to your home group that you have a problem with alcohol; would I still be welcome if people knew my faults?

Tanya concludes with a plea for pastors and leaders not to communicate or model that we have to be perfect. Surely if they are prepared to model vulnerability it becomes so much easier for everyone else: “ If a pastor can lay bare her or his soul, with all its cellulite and sin, then the church may feel they can also be honest.”

I think that’s a crucial question.

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Leadership Lessons: Evangelical Unity 1

You don't have to move very far beyond the confines of your own local church to discover that questions of how and why evangelicals relate to each other are rife in the UK at the moment. And even whether we should (of COURSE we should. Jesus prayed that his followers would be one).

It doesn't take long to come up against thorny issues like preferred worship styles, matters concerning the Holy Spirit or questions of leadership and gender. Nor long to meet people who assume that those who disagree with them always and necessarily hold a weak view of scripture.

It doesn't take long to find people who are clearly evangelical but who express it in some quite different ways to me, and therefore to talk past each other or find it impossible to work together simply because we spend too much time in our own silos and just don't get each other

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