Serena and I have just returned from a two week break in Northumberland.  I came to see it as very much a "non retreat" retreat.  "Non retreat" in that it wasn't intended to be a retreat and wasn't at a retreat centre.  But, a retreat in the sense that it provided some very much needed R&R after a very difficult 12 months at our church, and an ( Read more... )

 The whole (well, most) of London is in shock after another senseless evening and night of rioting on the streets: cars burnt out, shops smashed up and looted, buildings burnt to the ground.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to these senseless acts of violence - a political protest this ain't.

My initial reaction, like most others, was one of ( Read more... )

Alleluia, alleluia!  Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!  Alleluia, alleluia!

On Easter Sunday my wife and I celebrated the resurrection of our LORD in Norwich Cathedral. The place was absolutely packed. I know we must never forget that it only takes two or three to be gathered together to worship in the presence of God, but it always feels ( Read more... )

What happened that first Good Friday? Well, the biblical account of the Passion is quite simple - Jesus was handed over to the Romans from the High Priests who then whipped up a crowd to call for his death. Pilate eventually gives in to the pressure and gives him over to be crucified until he is dead ( Read more... )

Shortish post today (and skipping out the rather important institution of the Lord's Supper, but I'll hope I'll be forgiven that! I'm also one post behind ( Read more... )

It might seem like a strange thing to do to skip the best part of 5 chapters of teaching (Matthew 22 to 25), but this series of blog posts are really about the events of Holy Week. In any case, there is no necessity to believe that the block of teaching Matthew 22 to 25 actually took place between the entry into Jerusalem and the Anointing at ( Read more... )

This will be a short post today - 15 minutes until our screen curfew at 2200! (Periodically necessary to ensure we actually go to bed ( Read more... )

I'm not a great blogger to be honest - extremely irregular! So I thought as a final piece of Lenten discipline I might try to blog each day through Holy Week. (I say "try" because we're away from Good Friday until after Easter Sunday, so there may be more than one day updated in one go ( Read more... )

Things have been pretty insane for the last month or so. I don't really want to go into all the details, but it is church-based frustration, angst, disappointment...you get the picture. It's left me feeling very flat indeed, and whilst I'm normally an optimist everything has seemed pretty hopeless ( Read more... )

Here are the notes from the sermon I preached a couple of weeks ago. (My first attempt at not reading from a script, so you may not be able to get the whole gist of it ( Read more... )