Videos with PB

I’ve begun posting some video interviews on The proGnosis I conducted with Peter Baker back in February. Peter is one of the ministers of Highfields Church in Cardiff. One video will be going up every day this week (including the weekend) so look out for them. I apologise for any jitters in the sound—if anyone would like to buy me a new computer it’d solve that problem!

Here’s one video that won’t be going up on The proGnosis. Peter’s answer to this question was the one that stuck most in my memory. I asked Peter, How have you changed theologically through your years in ministry?

Saint’s Stories! #7

SAINT MOSES THE BLACK

Living 330-405 AD, Moses the Black has one of those testimonies that gets paraded in church mission weeks.

Ecclesiastes Series

I’ve been asked to organise a series on Ecclesiastes to run over the summer. The best known bit of Ecclesiastes, made famous by The Byrds and their ‘to everything turn, turn, turn’ and by funerals, is the bit where it talks about a time to be born and a time to die, a time to cast away stones and to gather them together (Eccl. 3:1-8).

Reflections on the Church Planting Week at Summer School

Steve Timmis and David Fairchild enthusiastically taking questions

“Every church is planted into a particular culture and generation and is only designed for that particular culture and generation. In other words, every church has a shelf life.” So began the church planting week of the summer school at WEST. Steve Timmis (of the Crowded House, Porterbrook Network and recently Acts 29) kicked us off with that statement that he called the live grenade in the room with its pin still in. Joining him was David Fairchild (of Kaleo Church and Acts 29).

What follows are some fairly disjointed and unorganised reflections from the week.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

By Saint Benedict of Nursia

I don’t know how I came across this book, probably a free give away from WEST whilst I was there! I’ve got a 1909 translation with introduction by Abbot Gasquet! You can also read an online 1949 version translated by Rev. Boniface Verheyen, here. It was originally written sometime shortly after 429 AD and has been the most influential Rule and order of monks in the West ever since. The idea of the Rule is that it is basically a rule book for how monks of the Benedectine order were and are to live.

Hoffi Coffee

Well, at the closing ceremony for WEST, during my interview I was asked what I had lined up in terms of ministry. I jokingly said that I had nothing and would probably end up on Job Seeker’s Allowance. It turns out I can’t claim JSA since my wife is on a well enough paid job and because we’re savers not spenders!

Saint’s Stories! #6

SAINT BASIL THE ELDER

Dying around 341 AD, we know more about his offspring than we do about Basil himself.

Are we Cleverer Today than Yesterday?

Modernism has had us believe for years that we’re getting increasingly cleverer than people of years gone by. I don’t believe it! It’s all tied into the idea of progress that we make advancements in civilisations and so society progresses. We have this tendency to think that people thousands of years ago were stupid. I started to stop believing this a few years ago after reading Augustine’s Confessions (or at least an abridged version of it because I’m not clever enough for the full version!