New Kid on the Blog

Been a while since I did one of these, thanks to Dr John for posting, in turn taken from Bill at the Old Fart's Blog Have Any Pets: Two Dogs Have Any Children: Two aged 7 & 4 - one of each kind.... Smoke: Ummmmm, yep Drink: Whenever thirsty, yes. Exercise: limited Spend Your Life On Facebook: No, but keep forgetting to exit before leaving PC so give the impression I am there all the time Play On A Sports Team: ha ha ha ha ha ha Belong To Any Organizations: Campaign for Real Ale, Rural Theology Association, Greenbelt Angels, Writer's groups, BMF, oh and the Church, tend to be quite involved in that, I also used to be CMA (Christian Motorcyclist Association), Love Your Job: Mostly Like To Cook: Yes Play An Instrument: Guitar, but not as well as I would like... Sing: Yes, in tune but with no finesse. Dance : 'The music moves me, but it moves me ugly'. Speak Multiple Languages: Passable French alongside my passable English. Ice Skate: Never really saw t...

I've been musing over the past few hours over the reasons I continue to blog. As many of you will know I continue to twitter frequently and I keep in touch with folk via facebook and though sometimes neglected I do keep coming back to this blog and waffling away, and when I have time I love to look around my friends in the blogsphere and to read opinions that inspire, challenge, disturb and confuse me - all of which keeps me thinking. Every now and then I do ask myself if this here blog is an exercise in narcissism or an ego massage for a cleric that wants to be considered slightly cool and alternative (as if!). Often these thoughts end up being voiced out loud and you have to put up with them so if I've said this all and you've read it all before I apologise, but here goes. I continue to blog because I think there is an unhelpful amount of mystery around what it is that Clergy actually do. There's the constant quip I hear about us working one day a week - each time ...

Some conversations I have had lately, along with some listening I have been doing to the Mars Hill Bible Church podcast (the cool Mars Hill with Rob Bell, not the other one) whilst driving around, mainly to Exeter, over the past week or so has got me thinking again about a perennial problem for both ministers and the Church in general. Well, not necessarily a perennial problem, perhaps more of an ongoing issue. What do people think of us? I have an image problem, by which I mean I worry too much over what people think about me. I am one of those aware enough of my own insecurities to know that I like to be liked. I worry that people might not like me, or that I might offend people. There are good reasons and bad for this - the good reasons are that I don't want to be a barrier to people finding out about faith, or that I might skew perceptions of the Church by the way I present myself and share the Gospel. The bad reasons are all tied up with when I feel insecure in myself an...

I went a bit mad this last Sunday and ended up doing three different sermons at three very different services, so here's the one from the 'main' morning service, based on the Gospel Reading for Trinity 3/Proper 8 Year B Proper 8 (2009) Mark 5.21-43 Turning things around Irishman walks into a bar with a pig under his arm ‘where did you get that’ asks the barman? I won it in a raffle’ replies the pig…. Firstly, I am allowed to tell Irish jokes because I'm Irish (kind of). Second, at the risk of taking one of my favourite jokes to bits too much, I like this joke because like all the best jokes it thwarts our expectations! Jokes are funny (if they are funny) because something happens that we weren’t ready for! Likewise the things which stick in our minds from the Bible are the things which turn the world upside down, that remind us that there is more to this faith business, and especially to this Jesus chap, than we could contain in all of our theologies, philosophies, trad...