New Kid on the Blog

Three posts in a row, my mind is racing (must be all the caffeine I've consumed this morning) so I'm filling in the time with a few posts - perhaps trying to compensate from not being in the 'creative atmosphere' of greenbelt by being a bit creative on my own. Anyway, every now and then I put something in my blog about what books I'm reading and then usually forget to mention what i thought, so here (with some help from Amazon) are a few i've read and what i thought about them I love Dave Gorman's books, style and general attitude, and the Googlewhack adventure is his best so far - there's a certain lunacy inherent in his inability to resist a challenge and the way he sets himself seemingly meaningless tasks which become imbued with a desperation the reader is drawn into as the book carries on. I really enjoyed reading this book, and one is kept wondering right up until the end whether he actually ends up achieving his goal - by which time you're not...

Was a bit harsh about Greenbelt in my last post, and now i have guilt issues.... It is unfair (and frankly wrong) to say that they aren't engaging seriously with theology, my beef is that there is so little basic theological teaching in the Church and lots of esoteric, or trendy theological subjects that grab attention for a while and then fade out - and i think to a certain degree this is reflected at GB. Of course there are lots of important issues which people need to grapple with about our engagement with the world through faith and art, and GB does this admirably, but i still have this niggling feeling that if we don't own the shared theology of the Church which stretches way back to our roots then we build sometimes very complex edifices on rather shaky foundations. I have been fortunate to have a very small part in the brainstorm session for greenbelt over the past few years, and some fantastic ideas have come out of those sessions, including the idea of a small series ...

In response to a couple of requests, here again is the chance to hear some of the sermons on the creed of which i was one last term at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Been thinking a bit why i don't really feel any attraction to Greenbelt this year, and i think it is because, yet again, there is no serious attempt to engage with basic Christian Theology - I am not one to be bound by doctrine and dogma, preferring faith in Jesus Christ! But I do believe that to know who we are as Christians we need to know where we come from, and going back to what the Church has proclaimed for generations is a good start... The Faith and Theology Blog is undertaking this, a series called Theology for Beginners - worth looking out for. And the sermons from Emmanuel are here . Incidentally, perhaps my concern about emergent stuff is to do with a lack of accountability to the historic formularies of the Church. As well as structures of accountability which are built in (or should be) to more mainstream...