Are we yes but people?

During our cell group this week we engaged with the reading from Sunday, Galatians 3:25 end.

The writer of this passage wants the reader or listener to engage with some challenging ideas pointing us to some divisions and differences that don't seem to a have a place in the church or the kingdom. Or if they have a place in our life for us to identify them and reflect upon them .

Many of us crave for difference young people don't want to be like their old people, punks are not like Goths. Team and party colours separate from each other because we don't want to be like them other people.

But not all difference is bad. It is the difference and separation that does not allow the other person to take their full place in our community that should unsettle us enough to examine its cost. When we looked at some issues of difference and division we began to go to default position and say yes but, yes but they, yes but God would not, yes but that don't seem right. We knew God had a big vision but we could not help saying yes but. As I think through the divisions and differences in my life I am trying to listen for the, yes but.

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Response To Bishop North

A while back Bishop Phillip North spoke to New Wine and caused a bit of a reaction one of it was a Tweet to my millions of followers. In response I had a phone call from The Church Times asking for a quote because I serve in a poor parish, I declined and said I would put a more considered response on my blog, so here it is with a link to The Bishops full talk. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/4-august/news/uk/there-s-a-future-for-the-church-if-evangelicals-put-the-poor-first-bishop-north-tells-new-wine 1. One of the issues the church does not recognise is the exportation of people , talents and money from parishes like mine to middle class parishes which is draining and demanding on leadership. For 10 years I thought I was building a community, then it dawned on me I was building people up to go to other places. 2. Bishop Phillip talks of abandonment of the poor: I think it’s more complicated than that. When I came back to my Deanery in 2000 to my

The End is nigh

If you watch old black and white TV programs it is possible to see usually a man wearing a sandwich board stating ‘The end is nigh’ . We look back and perhaps see how misguided they were, wrong time? Wrong place? They were people who were passionate and prepared to stand out of the crowd for their cause. Those people who tried to guide us in a different direction are now images of ridicule and sly or open laughter. So where are they today? My feeling is these sandwich board bearers of the past are now the politicians of our government yes the once ridiculed people of the 50s have become politicians of today. Don’t be daft I hear you say they are not as ill thought out as those narrow minded misguided people of the past. Well I believe so and I see them imbedded in the in out EU argument. I feel I am being guided by the conversation of fear. Woe to us if we stay in woe woe to us if we leave. This form of argument is straight out of the 1950s our politicians today are black and white

me

I was and still am very unsure whether to post this blog. I still may regret it. I have always understood myself as strong male working-class urban solder normally ready for the conflict of the day. I used to say to my congregation occasionally if you knew me when I was 21 you would not like me. In my youth I was one half of the union rep who would go and bang on the managers desk for what seemed at the time important and usually unjust reasons. I once remember going to my manager and he giving bad news, my response was to say ‘that’s not fair!’ His response - ‘Who told you life was fair?’ I say this as a short introduction to my character. I am not like John the Beloved, quiet and reflective (but that is changing). I am more like Peter; impetuous, verbal, quick to promise, quick to react, but passionate for the cause. But there is a cost to being passionate and outspoken. The flip side for me is darkness and depression. Rejection of something you believe in your very cor

not so silent

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