the red pill

I promised in church that I'd blog my notes from this morning, as there was a lot of information shared quickly. I commend these to you for further reading. Remember - these words name what God sees in us, what He is calling us into being. I invite you again to ask for more of His Spirit that the eyes of your hearts might be enlightened. I also reproduce below the notes and the spoiler warning the text of the letter I referred to from Three Billboards Outside Epping Missouri. (I used the way Chief Willoughby calls out the better nature he sees possible in Officer Dixon as a way of understanding in part what Paul is doing in Ephesians 1) The notes were to guide me, they are not the message in total - that will be available on the church website next week, and available to  download by clicking here Ephesians Chapter 1 Verse 1 - You are holy, you are faithful 3 - Blessed in heavenly realm with every spiritual blessing in Christ 4 – Chosen to be holy & blameless

Our current Sunday morning teaching series is called "Red Letter Commandments", and takes a look at the places in Matthew's gospel where Jesus gives a commandment that we feel is still relevant to us today. Last week I preached on Matthew 5:38-42 and Jesus command to us not to take revenge, but to engage in creative nonviolent resistance. This week I was speaking from the following paragraph Matthew 5:43-47, Love your enemies. I remembered that I had once read a sermon from Dr King on that text, and so I read it again in preparation. It is an amazing sermon, far better than I could have aspired to, and I shared that fact this morning. I quoted from one section, and said that I would share the text from my blog for those who'd like to read the whole thing. This is a transcript from a recording made November 17, 1957 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. Right in the heat and turmoil of the civil rights movement. I pray his call to radical love will

In Hebrews 13:8 we are reminded of a timeless truth, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.”  This morning in church I shared that if something were true at the time of Jesus’ life, it’s still true today. If there was any truth in His teaching 2000 yrs ago, it’s still true today. If His life and ministry are an example, they are still an example to us now. If his death on the cross had an effect 2000 yrs ago, it still has that effect today. If His resurrection was a sign of anything then, it’s still the same sign now. If His ascension into heaven meant He was powerfully interceding for us then, and preparing a place for us, then those things are still true today. And finally that if the giving of the Holy Spirit, so liberally poured out onto humanity that Pentecost day, empowered Christians to live, serve, love and minister in the power of God at the beginning of the Church’s story then the same is true today. Because Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, toda

A few people have heard some things have been happening at Tabernacle Baptist Church Wolverhampton, and wanted to hear more. So I have written a brief summary of the exciting things that are happening. Over recent years the church has been in a season of growth. This has meant we’ve needed to rethink the way we do some of our leadership, decision making and structuring life together so that we can still be making sure people receive our well-known warm welcome and hospitality, and also find a way into the life of the church in such a way that they are enabled to grow as disciples of Jesus. A number of years ago we began supporting a local evangelical church that had been struggling, and in 2012 we merged the two churches into one church that meets in two locations. This year, God has been generous to us, and through a significant gift we have been enabled to make some serious headway on mission, vision, and strategy. When the leadership team went away on retreat, we fe

Today has been a sad day for evangelicals in the UK. The largest umbrella organisation, the Evangelical Alliance (EA), has today discontinued the membership of Oasis Trust, an agency that has done more than almost any other to raise the profile of evangelism, youth ministry, gospel-inspired social action ministry and a distinctively Christian approach to matters of education, health and social welfare. The reason the EA did this? Steve Chalke, the founder and director of Oasis, has called for a public conversation between evangelicals around the issues of human sexuality, same-sex marriage and faithful examination of approaches to scripture. Let me be clear, what I feel is a tragedy is not that the wider evangelical constituency might differ with Steve and Oasis, but that the simple act of calling for a conversation has led to them being effectively defined as non-evangelical. It was remarked to me recently that Jesus merely had to say one sentence for Lazarus to be raised from t

This last weekend saw approx 1300 baptists joining together in a very sunny Blackpool for the annual Baptist Assembly; a time for us to gather in prayer, celebration and reflection about the life of our Baptist Union of Great Britain , and the work of BMS World Mission. For the last few years I've had the privilege of being one of those who gets to shape some of the larger sessions, we have the somewhat utilitarian title of "session Design Group". It has been a thrilling experience seeing words we've crafted and laboured over be used in ways that have brought joy, peace, hope, laughter, as well as creating space for people to encounter God or access his word afresh. This year I had the task of shaping a communion service that would be intergenerational, that is to say would speak in some way to people of every age. For various reasons there were some constraints (getting more than a thousand people moving around in a fairly full space can be tough, and we needed t

I'm so grateful to Maggi Dawn for flagging up the growing number of churches offering Blue Christmas events. Wolverhampton's third Blue Christmas will happen at on December 18th at 7.30pm

The following is a conversation I had yesterday with Robin Ince who has just become the patron of Dignity in Dying, a campaigning group that is seeking a change in the law in the UK to permit assisted suicide. It happened on Twitter, and I was delightfully surprised when my response to his tweet announcing his patronage was met with a reply, and a long conversation. Such is the nature of Twitter that these tweets could easily be lost in a few days, so I've attempted to repost them here as a record of that exchange.  Because of the pace of the conversation, I've sought to arrange tweets in order of their response, rather than simply chronologically. I hope it makes sense.  I'd love to hear your comments. Robin Ince   ‏ @ robinince have just become a patron of this enlightened campaign Dignity in Dying. here is Patrick Stewart voicing the campaign http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LPO4Ke1EtQ … Jonathan Somerville   ‏ @ baptistjon @ robinince  it