The Simple Pastor

Yesterday I reviewed What they didn’t teach you in seminary by James Emery White and there was one topic that really got under the skin. Should a church go for excellence as a value? Here’s what White had to say in a chapter on values called ‘hills to die on’: “Our eighth value is that excellence [...]

Quite possibly. That would change the controversy I suspect if it was widened to include those two luminaries. Let me make my case. In reading some of the multitude of posts about Rob Bell in recent days, I discovered the following. I came across Tom Batterson who as a bookseller has read an advance copy [...]

Yesterday I wrote about the process we went through over about 6 or 7 months in coming to the conclusion that we are to move to Sweden to church plant again. I’d thought I’d unpack those elements a little bit so they can be viewed in a different way. Scripture (1) We are convinced from [...]

This is a lightly edited version of the statement I presented to our church members about the guidance we believe we have with regards to our decision to move to Sweden. I’ve posted it for a number of reasons. Openness. I think it’s important to see how decisions are reached, it helps build trust. Learning. [...]

*This is the third in my series looking at why consumerism is an issue for Christians – intro, part 1* The words ‘remember the poor’ ring loud in the Bible (Gal 2:10) and in recent years have had plenty of resonance in the movement of churches I belong to. The Lausanne Paper: An Evangelical Commitment [...]

*This is the second (the first is more of an intro here) post into ‘why I think consumerism should be a big deal for Christians* It’s quite a headline really, when you stop to think about it. Pretty much everything these days seems to be about the environment. Climate change was one of the themes [...]

I occasionally get frustrated at the relationship between the church and consumerism. On the one hand lots of our best authors, thinkers and leaders have named it and shamed it and on the other hand it seems to have made no change to the way we live. At all. I also get frustrated by the [...]

I’ve just watched Martin Luther King’s rightly famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. Even 40 plus years later it’s powerful, hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck raising stuff. The man was a gifted wordsmith and an extraordinary communicator, but he needed a dream. It was the dream that carried the day, it was the dream of freedom that people hungered [...]

I almost always find myself reading Genesis in January and it strikes me that we very often focus on the areas of conflict between contemporary scientific theories and the Book of Genesis and miss out on the very many areas where the two agree. Here are some that I’ve noted: The forming of the universe [...]

I’m not a scientist. Nowhere even close. I barely passed physics and biology GCSE’s, I’m fairly rubbish at maths beyond mental arithmetic (as long it doesn’t include long division) and I think the periodic table is a piece of antique furniture. So why am I convinced about the science of climate change? Firstly, it’s a [...]

So the other day the TV went into the Garage for a month of solitary confinement. At the end of the month we will pronounce judgement on said box – it will be either returned to the Whittall family home or sent into permanent exile. The decision got a few comments on the blog and [...]

A while ago I read my friend Dave’s account of the impact of a talk I gave, and he listed the questions I posed that night, I’ve turned those questions into a series of posts which I’ve now finished. Here’s the complete set Questions of life What about the consumer dream? What about the environment? [...]