Whatever - Bigot - Hate Speech!

Adam4d on form again:

Pastors should visit come rain or shine

I've recently started visiting regularly in the parish. I was doing this a few weeks back when it was warm and sunny and I jokingly said to an elderly couple that the Summer is great for visiting. Their response: "you lightweight; pastors should be out come rain or shine!" I was a bit taken aback by their criticism especially as the couple in question only come to church on special occasions (perhaps I should have responded "and parishioners should be in church come rain or sun!") Anyway I was reading Chaucer's description of a pastor and noticed that like the elderly couple, he thinks a good pastor visits whatever the weather. This is from prologue to the Canterbury Tales:

Wide was his parish, with house far asunder
yet he neglected not in rain or thunder

In sickness or in grief, to pay a call
on the remotest whether great or small

Perhaps I should be out come rain or shine!

Put away the Che Guevara t-shirts, stop the revolution and go to church!

Kevin De Young makes a wonderful and compelling case why you should be at church every Sunday. Here's a taster:

Don’t give up on the church. The New Testament knows nothing of churchless Christianity. The invisible church is for invisible Christians. The visible church is for you and me. Put away the Che Guevara t-shirts, stop the revolution, and join the rest of the plodders. Fifty years from now you’ll be glad you did.

15 years after 9/11: a Christian reflection

11th September 2001 is a marker in world history. It is the "where were you when..." moment of our generation. Much like July 20th 1969 was to a previous generation (Armstrong landing on the moon) and May 8th 1945 to a generation before that (V-E day), 9/11 is a day when everyone remembers what they were doing when they first heard or saw the news.

Sadly, since then the fears and anxiety created by terrorist threats have become an ever present reality. We wonder if we will ever be free of that sense of unease in our lives. Recent events including the murder in Paris of an 80 year old priest celebrating communion, continue to feed that unease. 

Therefore, on this the 15^th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, it is worth pausing to consider how Christians should respond when horrible things happen (whether it be the carnage resulting from Islamic terrorism or an unexpected diagnosis in health or the sudden death of a family member). As someone has put it “Where is God when it hurts so bad?”

Part of the answer Scripture gives, is that the sadness we feel when bad things happen is one of God’s ways to tell us that this world is not all there is. The book of Ecclesiastes puts it like this:

“God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.”

In other words, the world is filled with much that is good and lovely but often things/people/circumstances ‘interrupt’ our joy causing us to wonder if this life is all there is. When, for example, relationships end and we feel heartbroken or when death strikes and we experience desolation, these are huge pointers to our longing for eternal life. All of us yearn for a world where there is no suspicion (of potential terrorists or of anyone else), where there is no need for scanners (at the airport or at the DGH) and where there is no sinfulness (big and public as at 9/11 or small and hidden such as anger or lust).

Astonishingly, the Bible offers us the chance to be part of such a wonderful sin-free world for ever! It is an offer which comes through a man – Jesus Christ – who lived the perfect life that none of us ever could and who died the death that each of us deserved. It is only by believing in His death and resurrection that God promises eternal life (rather than everlasting torment) – a life where there will be no more sickness, suffering or sorrow but limitless joy!

The phrase is true for the Christian believer: all will be well in the end. May we – whatever our suffering – put our trust in Christ as we await that day when all truly will be well, where evil will be finally overthrown and where Christ will welcome all who trust in Him into His everlasting kingdom. Amen.

Parish magazine article for 11th September 2016 AD

How will you die?

Would you like to know? Click below...

Overpopulation is a myth so have lots of children...

... it's good for the planet! Well argued for in this article. Here's a taster:

Everything is headed in the wrong direction for environmental scaremongers. If we’re already experiencing the negative force of climate change — which I’m told we are every time we have ugly weather somewhere in the country — shouldn’t things be getting worse? Well, the real trouble is always right over the horizon.

Take India. Not only do they have to deal with Americans despoiling the earth, its population has exploded from 450 million in 1960 to 1.25 billion today. Yet by every tangible measurement of human progress the Indian people live better now than they did before the colonialists started using refrigerators. And it’s not just India.

Read the whole thing here

Oh to be a pastor in Chaucer's making (pt 1)

This is from the prologue to The Canterbury tales:





A holy-minded man of good renown
there was, and poor the Parson of the town,

Yet he was rich in holy thought and work.
He also was a learned man, a clerk,

Who truly knew Christ's gospel and would preach it
devoutly to his parishioners, and teach it

Benign and wonderfully diligent
and patient when adversity was sent

For so he proved in great adversity
He much disliked extorting tithe or fee

Nay rather he preferred beyond a doubt
giving to poor parishioners round about

From his own goods and Easter offerings
He found sufficiency in little things




Oh to be a such a pastor
Lord I need thy power!