Sacred Treasure David Robertson is often uncomfortably provocative - but he's probably on the money here: 10 'prophecies' for the church in 2018 An inspiring new tradition in LA, an annual Christmas performance of Handel's Messiah by the homeless, those with…
Happy New Year Y'all! Sacred Treasure Tim Keller wrote a helpfully argued piece for the New Yorker last month: Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore. Chris Green has a good piece on sermon illustrations Ian Paul asks whether…
Sacred Treasure A lovely tribute to my late friend Tom Chapman, a Norwich pastor who died after a 10-year battle with a brain tumour Phil Whittall offers an excellent summary of Justin Taylor's thoughts on diversity in the church. Stimulating…
I'm haunted by contemporary city life - the millions of parallel lives occupying the same square miles. Christopher Nevinson entitled one of his most striking paintings, The Soul of The Soulless City, and I was thinking about this recently. But…
Sacred Treasure Emma Scrivener on form again - 13 reasons NOT to commit suicide. Always good to read books by non-western writers. Here's a great list of African theological writing. Colin Chapman, veteran scholar of Christianity and Islam, has two…
London, like many historic cities, forces rich and poor to live cheek by jowl. It always has. It is much less ghettoed than many more modern cities - although house price escalation is changing that. Thus the so-called Royal Borough of…
Amidst a fairly busy schedule in Turkey this week, managed to occupy a day off with a trip into the mountains above Antalya to the abandoned city of Termessos. It’s power and wealth derived from controlling the only local pass through the mountains – but its construction, so high and so elaborate (temples, theatre, agora, civic buildings, many houses etc), must have been an astonishing feat of engineering and endurance. (more…)
Have been spending this week in Cambridge for the CICCU main events. It’s been a really encouraging time. But I had a lovely time on Tuesday afternoon wandering around with my camera, revisiting old haunts and generally taking it easy. Marvellous. Even more marvellous was the fact that the sun actually came out. Hard to believe when the south-west seems afflicted by hurricanes and tsunamis. (more…)
Thanks to the generosity of some friends, Rachel & I were able to have a few days in their Paris flat last week (and were even able to cover most of our Eurostar tickets with Nectar points). All in all: a result. But the highlight for both of us was actually 80km north-west of Paris in the little Normandy village of Giverny. Neither of us had ever been before. But I felt was as if I’d been going there all my life. In fact, every nook and cranny felt so familiar it was as if it was a childhood home. For this was the home of Claude Monet, and the subject of decades of paintings. (more…)
I believe in words. I believe in the importance of words. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I believe in the primacy of words. But words can never be exclusive media of truth, understanding and communication. Please note: they are the primary (i.e. supreme) means, not the only means. I’ve touched on this issue before. Words are still essential.
As I mentioned then, the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov attacked the myth of the image by saying: