New Kid on the Blog

A rare event these days, I've been so busy I've not really had time to go into depth about much - but this Sunday i had a longer talk to prepare on the book of Ruth, under the title 'Ruth and Redemption' so here it is, or at least here is the introduction and the rest can be read here Ruth and Redemption Context - starting with Ruth Chapter 1 You would think that with the theme of ‘kinsman redeemer’ that runs through the book of Ruth that there would be a fair amount on Redemption there, wouldn’t you? Well, there is, I guess, but it’s not terribly explicit in the text! Paul kindly sent me some notes on this thoughts for this evening’s talk and I have to say that i couldn’t really wrap my brain around them terribly easy. Apparently there are two words for ‘redemption’ that occur 23 times between them through the book of Ruth, but I couldn’t find most of them! I did find some wonderful websites of Jewish sermons – or ‘Midrash’ – that talk about this wonderful book of scr...

Last week I mentioned i had spoken on the theme of faith and belief as the opening talk in a series of Lent thoughts about the Apostle's creed. So here it is Congratulations on making it to the first of our talks for this Lenten period as we grapple with the Apostle’s Creed. As it was my suggestion that we follow this series over these five weeks it is also my responsibility to say why this is a good idea, and what we hope will happen, before I get on with talking about what we are doing when we say ‘I believe…’ particularly when we consider this creed that we will be looking and saying together over the coming weeks… I’ll come clean and say that the reason we are looking at this document over the coming weeks is because I think that on the whole very few of us really think about what we are doing when we stand up together and say the Creeds. Week by week we reel off either the Apostle’s Creed – our subject of study and the version used in morning and evening prayer; or the Nic...

Actually, that post heading should be framed as a question... I've seen on some blogs that long posts are split with a good deal of the post hidden away until someone clicks 'more' - is there a bit of code that i could add to get blogger to do that? If it were possible then I would be tempted to post that long talk I did yesterday! It went down quite well, so you might like it.... Oh, and yes I did notice how many errors there were in last night's blogposting, but it was late and I feel no compulsion to edit it. This is about as gritty as my blog gets, unlike Jenny Haha talking about wolf crotch ! Which gave rise to some discussion about what Christians might feel appropriate to blog . If you do follow the link to Jenny's site, then make sure you read the comments, funny and thoughtful! And if you are in the mood to surf then pop over to Dr John's blog, always worth a read - particularly as he encourages you to comment (hopefully with more success than m...

I spent much of the weekend either in prayer (good thing) or preparing for worship (sermons, prayers etc) or writing a pretty weighty talk for this evening's 'Lent Talk' series (the talk is 3,500 words long and i think it might be a bit much to post - unless there is some demand! This is obviously a sort of blackmail and I will see if anyone comments in response to this before I will publish it. It is about 'what it means to believe' in the context of our series of talks about the Apostle's Creed). All of today has been spent in meetings, visits and services, so i have not really had time to blog. My only thought for today is Actually, I don't have a thought for today, go and see Dr John, or Jenny haha Cflaw and disorder) or The Old Fart, or Moog, or one of the other very worthwhile folk on my 'recommended blogs;list for something to make you laugh, cry, think, groan or whatever (depending on which one you choose, in fact you may do all at once.) See y...

As part of our Sunday evening series on 'Jesus and....' - an attempt to get back to basics with looking at what Jesus said and did, i ended up covering for a poorly colleague who was unable to speak on 'Jesus and the Law'. It wasn't a subject i planned to speak on when i chose the titles for the series, in fact I thought that it would be an interesting talk to listen to - but as you'll see in the text below the fact i had to prepare this was quite rewarding in itself. Unfortunately because of other pressures i had to eat into time spent with my friend at Hook over the weekend, and with some of my time with my mum in Devon. In the end, though, i thought what was said came out OK, and the work it took to get it to this stage was very rewarding. Comments welcomed... Been a bit short of comments lately, so here is some incentive to get involved folks! Team Evening Worship Jesus and the Law Two things struck me in preparing this evening’s talk - firstly...

or should that be 'why faith is important!' ? Well it's certainly not because of 'religion', or 'tradition', or beautiful churches, or singing hymns, or small groups, or even Christians - although all these things have a place in the tapestry of what it means to be a Christian. Following on from my thoughts in the 'labels' post below - it comes back to Jesus... So here's a sermon on the theme, from yesterday morning: Readings Hebrews 10.11-25 Mark 13.1-8 Jesus, holy and disturbing one Great honour to be invited as guest speaker, thank you to Chris for allowing his old Team-mate to come and be a part of worship here in Hook. Also something of a risk, as the most boring sermon I have ever heard in my life was a guest preacher at my college, who having been asked to preach specifically on one thing started on a different tack altogether and proceeded to disappear off for a very long time on a journey that very few of us managed to keep up with… Chr...

...at least in 'trial' format, the podcast and website are now available to check out and give feedback for. As it might not interest everyone (anyone?) and because it is still in trial do send me an email fracme[at]yahoo.co.uk if you want to listen to it. Its about church, theology and all that stuff....

Me and my friend, colleague and co-conspirator Brian plan to do our first podcast recording today, though my expectation is that we will drink lots of coffee, wonder about what to say, smoke too much and then come back another day to do it. I have set aside a couple of hours for this out of a hectic day because i am off to a long meeting this evening and want to do something theological and ecclesial with some time... If and when this all comes off, please don't expect to hear the end of it!