Over the past couple of weeks several friends and acquaintances have asked a variation on one of two questions: “When are you coming back to church?” and “Are you still preaching?” The first question is linked to my roots in Protestant Christian circles, most recently as a member of the Methodist tradition. The second question … Read More →
Tag Archives: Worship
Resisting the Inevitable?
I clearly remember sitting in my parents’ front room cheering on the vote in favour of women’s ordination to the priesthood. At the time I was a member of the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, and women had been accepted as clergy in that denomination for a couple of decades before this momentous vote in the … Read More →
Church Authentic?
He opened the letter, somewhat gingerly, and unfolded the pristine paper. Gazing at the hand-written text, so unusual and almost unfamiliar in the digital age, he knew already that this would be a letter from a concerned Christian. The words were well meant, as ever they were from the person in question, but they did … Read More →
Why Won’t You Sing Jerusalem?
It had been an organised trip for priests still completing their initial years of training, or in their first, post-training parish. A group of us were sitting on the veranda of the retreat complex in which we were staying, and the topic turned to hymns we didn’t like (for whatever reasons, we didn’t like these … Read More →