the red pill

The Youth Camp that we'd organised for August had to be hastily re-arranged as the field we rent was waterlogged. So last week, instead of taking our young people and youth leaders away for a week, we ended up offering a shorter, MiniCamp, based from Bromley, but with several trips out. The first day was a trip to Thorpe Park, a theme park with very good rides, and very long queues. I hadn't been to a theme park for a very long time (aside from one summer working in one in my student days) and it wasn't until i had safely shepherded the lads i was looking after into their seats, and got strapped in myself that I remembered "Oh yeah, rides, kinda scary..". The second day was at the seaside, based in Whitstable, and included the rather surreal moment of ten of our group in the sea swimming and playing, being watched by ten on the beach huddled under raincoats, towels, umbrellas to keep dry from the rain. Friday we went up into London to do the Big Bus tour, a boat t...

There’s a lot to catch up on, so today will probably be a multiple posting day. Let’s start with the good news, something I’ve been meaning to share for a while. Following fertility treatment, we’re pregnant again (well, I say “we”…). It’s 14 weeks ago today we had a third course of treatment in Northampton – the first course resulted in our son, the second, last summer, was unsuccessful – and that makes my wife 16 weeks pregnant, baby (who is currently referred to as Hope) is due the 2nd week of February, about a month after our son’s 3rd birthday. We’ve had a couple of scans, the first, at 8 weeks, allowed us to see the heart, and even hear it, and then we had another a few weeks ago that enabled us to see all was well again. It’s the strangest thing, catching a glimpse of this person who we’ll not meet for so long. “Surely you knit me together in my mother’s womb”. We’re blown away by the grace that has been extended us, and consider ourselves hugely blessed. We know, after having 1...

I've just started reading Kester Brewin's book "Signs of Emergence". I'm only 30 pages in but already convinced it's brilliant, it has to be, it agrees with many of my own preferences... I wish I could write half as eloquently as he does, he explores so beautifully the situation of the contemporary UK church. One passage I wanted to share with you comes in the middle of the introductory chapter. Brewin has challenged the opinion that the route to the revitalisation of church is the personal holiness of members, arguing that it is because what churches offer is "boring, unchanging, irellevant, says nothing to them (church leavers) about their life, and was completely unconnected to their experience" that church attendances have declined so sharply. (by the way, is there any kind of matrix developed that could chart the pace of change in western society? I have a hunch that if we could compare the stats on church decline with the rate of change in soc...

I'm aware that not all of my readers are people of faith, and that I really ought to do more to try and convince the heathen. So I'm posting this video as an effort to increase my evangelistic impact.