The river flows onwards
As I ran over one of the bridges to track north-side to then cross south again at what's known colloquially as Squinty or the Clyde Arch (seen right), I noticed...
Should the Church follow Anonymous?
Have you heard of the various Anonymous support groups that are across the world, facilitating the needs of alcoholics, narcotics, gamblers and overeaters? They have frameworks that support those who...
What does a ‘good death’ mean for a church?
We might possibly engage in a discussion about what is a good death for an individual, but a church? In Paula Gooder's book called 'Heaven', she explains that in the...
A life size Cow
Not this large though... When people celebrate the life of a loved one, we may wish for a visible sign. We heard today of a motorbike laying next to the...
A simple 1-2-3 diary
Often we fill our diary, it might be difficult to find any 'free' time. But does it actually help us? Our diary is one that defines our day but does...
hcruhC
Can Church really be turned completely around? What might it really look like, as our perspective may be biased with 20+ years of attending our own Church. In that time...
Spiritual dis-ease
When do we succumb? That slice of cake, a drink, a bet, getting into drugs or watching porn? I'm certainly not equating any of these but to eat that cake,...
Where do we start?
Regeneration of the Doctor There are a lot of smaller churches. Once they stood out as pinnacles of the community. People would attend at least for those hatches, matches, and...
Harvest Festival in 2022
The Harvest Festival, where we traditionally celebrate the crops of the season. So what do we do with Harvest Festival in 2022? The local farmers will have been amongst the...
What is prayer about?
"God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God."Oswald Chambers In Luke 11:1-13 Jesus teaches the disciples the "Lord's...
Mardi Gla anyone?
The route for Mardi Gla 2022 Where can you mix pride with protest, absolute joy and sadness, those outside of the church and those within? On Saturday 16th July approximately...
Crazy Covenant
Java Justice It all started so many years ago. From using a 4 foot tall inflatable coffee mug and a tray of real doughnuts to persuade merely highlight to the...
Hopeful Serving
A reflection given on Maundy Thursday about Hopeful Serving, based upon John 13: 1-17,31b-35. The date of Easter is always a mystery to me. But I can explain: take the...
Let Us Eat
No I am not trying to advertise a firm that delivers subs, coffee and a pizza to your door. This has far reaching conclusions. Our story this week comes from...
Spring a Connection
Hedgehog, Chicks and a Rabbit It must be Spring, now that the chicks are hatching, or rather unstitching from the needles. It's a time of new birth, possibly of new...
TDOR 2021
This year we have worked collaboratively with the University of Glasgow, as well as the Iona Community, members of the Woodlands Methodist Church, included a special message of hope from...
Why is God on Mute?
Welcome to this last of the four short sessions exploring prayer. So we can pray wherever whenever; we can imagine even re-imagine scenes within Bible passages or contexts in our life...
Looking back
There's an adage don't look back we aren't going that direction. That might be a good thing when regarding the Pandemic and seeking to return to normality but we want...
Using our imagination in a storm
Over the past year or so there have been a few storms in our lives - don't you agree? Here, in the second of the four sessions exploring prayer we...
Where could we pray?
This is the first of four sessions in the Strathclyde Methodist Circuit exploring prayer. The first session focusses upon where and when can we pray, looking at the various places...
Unanswered Prayers – Why?
Wow, I feel this is an area which we are all experts but rarely do we speak about this. These sessions were designed to help our prayer life, where previously...
Reset or Resume
At a recent Conference we considered Recovery- Reorientation - Renewal. This wasn't about a secular organisation's thoughts on rebranding but the Church's thoughts on 'what's next?' Was it to reset...
What does this mean?
As wend our way back from the recently opened shops, we may weave past the discarded fast food containers, glance up at the traffic as we cross the road and...
Reflective prayer – but when & where?
In our series of prayer explorations we have looked at how Jesus taught us how to pray; how we can find many opportunities to pray throughout the day (and night)...
Church is a loaded word
The word Church, in itself, means so much to every individual. To those whom regularly attend Church, it might mean that wonderful community where they belong, where they seek to...
Amidst the fields of gold
As I reflect upon the Good Shepherd passage (John 10:11-18) I imagine that I am walking amidst the fields, possibly not yet of gold, but of new shoots. The soil...
Praying with our mind
This is our third session of this course, one in which we seek to move away from a litany of petitions, a series of demands for God to perform upon...
Adaption is the new hope
Who would have thought that a year on we might possibly be able to congregate together to celebrate Easter in a Church? For some this is still not possible -...
Is this prayer as well?
We all have an understanding of prayer - or do we? There's a great perspective upon prayer by George Lings entitled 'Seven Sacred Spaces'. I wouldn't wanted to remove the...
Prayer Exploration #1
We have started to explore prayer. We could spend longer in what we already deem to know as prayer or pause - as is the thing in Lent - and...
Hands together, eyes closed…
I always used to add "Don't forget to blow your nose"... The traditional form of prayer is one that is led from the front, but where today 'the front' is...
What a community!
Within Scripture there's a community which is described in Acts 2 which is something we might want to emulate. They don't go to a church or a synagogue primarily as...
Remembrance Day 2020
Each year we recollect the past. Those times when our own and other countries were focused upon war, when so many people died, arguably needlessly. I have direct experience of...
As we grow older we might expect the Church to develop also
Could this be Church today for the 0-100 age gap?There are some lovely models of Church. Yes, these are good but relate to the past, the way it was. Such...
Is our product needing renewal??
The world is changing faster than we can keep up. The Church is still preaching to a world that doesn't exist.Scott Cormode, Pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the...
Is ‘worship’ a thing of the past?
What were you called when you were young? Did you have a Sunday name, one that shook you to the core when it was spoken? Perhaps over time the name...
The Community Returning to Flourish (Part 2)
No disrespect to some locations, but we have been places where it's original claims didn't quite match up. For some today, the reason to leave is forced upon them/ I'm...
Liquid Church in a sip
Here is the concept of Liquid Church, in a nutshell, or 'in a sip' if you like. Nothing too detailed, just broad brush strokes, or a succession of sips to...
How do you employ Disney ‘Plussing’ – Methodist Church Style!
Here are the ten key pointers heralded by Ali Johnson, the Methodist Church's Digital Evangelist, for the way forward with the digital presence the church. His video is attached at...
Where is our tipping point?
There comes a time when all organisations have to change tack. Not a gradual gentle turn but a sharp movement, which affects everybody. I recall one tipping point or pivot...
RE-modeling
Does anyone remember the black and white films of people making a clay vase? As the clay spins they skilfully guide the clay, allowing it to take shape. What change...
Planting a building. Is there an alternative?
It seems that gardening is becoming a theme here. Planting has often been problematic. You have to have the right conditions. The soil needs to be just right. You need...
Beauty of the Margins
Have we had that opportunity to pause as we pass by some gardens? The beauty of the plants, their colour can draw our eye towards the centre of the flower...
What are we looking at?
How many fingers am I holding up? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKLQBuSPVwQ&t=1m5s How many fingers am I holding up? It's a quote from a film entitled 'Patch Adams'. It's a film is really recommend...
Do you remember the arrival of FM radio?
As aircrew I have spent many hours listening to HF radio, where the background hiss was nearly always present. You couldn't listen to it for very long - bit like...
Can we chat in Church?
OK, the sermon is dragging on a bit, and you've noticed something embarrassing with their tie, or jacket. Have you ever wanted to elbow the person next to you and...
Returning to Normality
A question frequently asked these days, by the media, some politicians and those who frequented church: what does returning to normality mean? Some may respond with "return to what?" I...
Can you hear those voices?
What a year. Who would have thought a year ago we would have had experienced such a few months. We have moved from wondering how to fill our days perhaps,...
God allows suffering
How can a God allow such suffering in our world? Wars are undertaken for a particular gain without seeking to estimate the cost of the damage to our world, our...
Should Church Buildings ever open again?
What if we considered not to return to 'normal' but to consider a radical alternative? This post is drawn from an excellent article by @_Andyglover, entitled 'Should Church buildings ever...
Where there’s fire, there’s change
Christmas is irrelevant without Easter, and Easter is pointless without Pentecost. But can Pentecost be transformative today? But we don’t celebrate Pentecost like we do with Christmas nor Easter. What...
Reimagining Church : whom do we serve?
These are notes and, more importantly, questions drawn from a Church on the Margins discussion on 28 May 2020. The key questions Whom do we serve? How is the Church...
Dream Small
We may have been asked in the past to 'dare to imagine'... I know I have asked people to do this. We wanted to consider the whole landscape, to ponder...
Where do you find an Oasis on the commute?
As a teacher I found the daily commute either very tiring or a real blessing. On some occasions the sheer number of cars, the lorry travelling at its maximum speed,...
The Language Barrier
Have we ever have found language to be a barrier before? As a family we once went to Dunkirk for the day. Arriving at a cafe, I took a deep...
Hospitality within this Covid-19 Pandemic
A really thought provoking blog from a respected theologian Simon Sutcliffe. I have written about the Guest and Host before in ''Who is the Guest and Host?". What are your...
It’s ‘we’ not ‘me’…
The very early church - possibly before they got to call themselves church*1 - had some really relevant ways to connect with each other. This is my paraphrase of Acts...
Churches are A-Zooming!
What might we be willing to change now, and as we, hopefully, move towards the relaxation of 'lockdown'? Where as previously ministers, pastors, call them what you will, were possibly...
Where do ‘we’ go from lockdown?
What are the things we need to learn from this lockdown situation? How do we support the return to normality? Currently our buildings are locked, people are not permitted to...
This Easter is so different
Welcome to this, a framework for a Reflective Zoom service, as we consider what Maundy Thursday might mean to us today. We will hear some words, take time to ponder...
Living it not just talking it
This post was originally written prior to the #CoronaVirus Crisis. Hence consideration should be given to how we might consider this in the future, rather than in the here and...
What to consider – Liquid Church
So, if we are looking to reimagine Church, just what could we consider? Firstly, where and when we meet? The trappings of the past offer significant portals into the past,...
Church – a change?
We may soon be inundated with ideas on how to spend time whilst in self-isolation: be that knitting, praying, drawing or writing - even finding time to complete that 2000...
Are we strangers?
I was listening to someone describe an aspect of their life in the past, of the struggles that had faced. They said that they had often passed by the church...
In the busyness
Have you ever gazed at the river or canal and paused. What questions might you ponder? The connectivity between its source and wherever the water flows on to, the sheer...
What could be so different?
When you step away from the 'normal' what do we expect to see? I go to a Church which, it would be fair to say, worships traditionally. How you might...
‘Do we wish to invest in a church-as-we-have-known-it?
Could Church be a verb, not a noun?(The word ‘ecclesia’, often translated to church in our Bibles, doesn’t mean a church building but an assembly, a meeting.) I have been...
Who is the Guest and the Host…
As we wandered down a busy city centre shopping precinct we heard the booming voice "Repent and be saved!" Edinburgh : Princes Street I have to admit to moving towards...
New Years Resolutions
Have you thought of any New Year's Resolutions yet?...or reminded yourself of last year's resolutions! How we would go running and get fit!!?... For every half hour we run, we...
When is a Third Place a winner?
Where do we go to relax, to be free to say what we want to? Where could we all go to, to gather, to feel 'at home', to allow relationships...
Administration…Liquidation…what’s next for the church?
If administration is the process for a company to escape insolvency, and if that were to fail, liquidation is the ending of a company, the selling off of any assets...
Which glasses to choose?
Once some animals went to Heaven. The Golden Labrador asked God if it could sit on his left side, to keep him company. The Alsatian asked God if it could...
At the margins
A young man was admitted to 'Accident and Emergency', the family soon arrived to be at his bedside in Intensive Care. The man had fallen from a motorbike and was...