The Simple Pastor

I use a lot of technology. I like my old secondhand smartphone with its apps and I’d like to upgrade. I like my laptop and blogging. I like messing around with design and new browsers, I like Twitter, Google+ and to a much lesser extent facebook. I like sending emails, talking with friends on Skype, [...]

You might not know who those two gentleman are and why I think they are wrong might not be very important to you. Let me explain. Both of them are mega-church pastors who were involved in the recent Elephant Room conference. Platt is also the author of a book called Radical: Taking back your faith [...]

So a year ago we began an experiment in our home and we got rid of the TV. Actually to start with we only put it in the garage but after a month the experiment became permanent. We had lots of good reasons for doing so and seven months in as the World Cup was [...]

As you may know I’m a part of the Breathe Network and Breathe is being made the subject of a piece of doctoral research by Ruth Valerio, author of L is for Lifestyle, who many of you will know from our Breathe gatherings. Ruth wants to find out about the people involved with Breathe and [...]

Here’s a good observation from Gary McMurray after watching some TV. I think he’s right when he says, “For the TV channel and its advertisers, really there’s no choice in lifestyle – everyone should be pushing for materialism.” Which is why as Christians we need to exercise discernment when we watch the box. And why [...]

I just read about my friend Mark’s decision to unplug the TV and Roald Dahl’s hatred of the box in this excellent poem and so I decided to put a few more thoughts down on life without a TV seven months on. So the World Cup has just finished and of the total 64 possible [...]

*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 [...]

A few days ago my friend Matt Hosier wrote this post in which he (rightly) pointed out that our society has some strange ideas about what to tolerate or not tolerate. His examples were our strange acceptance of promiscuity and our hostile rejection of obesity. I wondered (in a comment on his post) whether Matt [...]

I’m continuing to ponder the Lausanne Evangelical Commitment to Simple Life-style and this opening section to part 5 caught my attention. “Jesus our Lord summons us to holiness, humility, simplicity and contentment. He also promises us his rest.” Jesus is summoning me to simplicity and contentment. Simplicity is not then a matter of choice but [...]

It is the goal of discipleship to become like Christ (2 Cor 3:18) but it’s a constant battle to keep thinking and working on this. Often I’m just hoping that somehow it’s happening. This provoked me to think again: “‘Life’ and ‘life-style’ obviously belong together and cannot be separated. All Christians claim to have received [...]

One of the sad things about being a Christian concerned about consumerism or passionate for a simpler more generous life is that you can often feel alone in this pioneering lifestyle. It is encouraging to discover more of my heritage and in doing so realise that we have some heavy weight hitters on our team. [...]

Journalist John Naish is an ardent environmentalist and anti-consumer campaigner. He’s the brain behind the Landfill Prize for example and Naish wants to start a movement of ‘enoughness’. In essence Naish says, rightly, that we’ve lost all sense of what is enough in our lives. We do not know when to stop and this inability [...]