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'These fragments I have shored against my ruins' (TS Eliot, The Waste Land)
Browsing All posts tagged under »pastoral ministry«
The future of (UK) ministerial formation: some musings
I have been involved in a large number of (private) conversations recently around a broad theme of ‘ministerial formation’, where ‘ministry’ is widely defined. It seems to me that we stand at the threshold of a significant change: this is in part necessary, and in part possible and desirable. For a century, or nearly two, […]
‘If God is male…’
February 5, 2012
‘… then the male is God.’ So wrote Mary Daly in a – perhaps the – classic text of early feminist theology, Beyond God the Father (Beacon, 1973). Daly’s argument in the book was that the predominantly masculine imagery deployed for God in Judaeo-Christian traditions inevitably led to a patriarchal society in which women were multiply […]
Why Baptists can’t (currently) be ‘complementarians’
January 13, 2012
I gestured at this argument in an introductory book on Baptist theology I have coming out soon; reading the proofs, it occurred to me that a more substantial discussion would not be out of place. Probably, I ought to write a journal article – ‘had we but world enough and time…’ One of the themes […]
Catholic Bishops, Baptist pastors, and same-sex marriage
December 13, 2011
It seems fairly likely that we in Scotland will see the extension of marriage to same-sex couples before the rest of the UK, probably in the next 2-3 years. The government has proposed this, and a consultation on the proposal has just closed. How should a Christian commentator respond to this idea? The theology here […]
Scot McKnight, Junia is not Alone: a review
December 7, 2011
Last week Scot McKnight put out a little ebook, available from your national Amazon, under the title Junia is not Alone: Breaking our silence about women in the Bible and the church today. I downloaded and read it the day after it came out. It is short, cheap, passionate, and excellent. McKnight opens his book […]
Could the evangelical gender debate be depolarised?
November 22, 2011
A conversation that some of us have been involved in privately has spilled over into the blogosphere and twitterverse in the last few days. It concerns attempts to get past the hard lines on gender roles in (family and) church that are being drawn within British evangelicalism. (There is of course a similar discussion in […]
Queer Hippo: musings on human sexuality
September 20, 2011
[This is a ‘Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis’ post: the ideas have been in my head for several years, and I’ve been wondering what, if anything, to do with them. Then I thought of the title, and just had to publish somewhere. There’s a book here – I’d be interested to know if readers of […]
Evangelical ecumenicity, networks, and denominations
May 11, 2011
A good day yesterday at the Scottish Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting, seeing lots of old friends, including our pastor-elect and his wife, speaking on ‘Evangelical doctrine: basis for unity or cause of division?’ and listening to Fred Drummond, of EA Scotland, talking about the various ‘magnets’ for evangelical unity emerging around the country, mostly […]
Rob Bell, Love Wins 5
March 21, 2011
One more post on chapter 1, looking again at complaints about Bell’s ‘orthodoxy.’ The chapter begins with a story that Bell told in the promotional video, and which has therefore become famous. An art exhibition at church included an exhibit with a quotation from Gandhi; someone attached a post-it note reading ‘Reality check: he’s in […]
The BUGB affirmation of the ministry of women 2: practicality
August 26, 2010
The BUGB Council decision was not to walk apart from those who cannot accept the ministry of women; rather it was to be more intentional about affirming the Union’s support of the ministry of women. If this does not mean exclusion, the question has rightly been asked, what does it mean? What difference can this […]
Shored Fragments 
March 11, 2012
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