Every have those days when you’re sorely tempted to be so hard on yourself?  Hmm.  You see, the thing about living a covenant or a ‘rule’ or a ‘way of life’ like the ones I’ve always commitment myself to is that as well as giving direction, they also give you a good talking to.  That, … More Jesus the Grinner

Another area in which we need to discover what allegiance to Jesus means is in the thing we’ve called the church, especially if we’ve named it as a particular brand of church.  Now, I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about a people having a particular charism that lights them up, an aspect of … More Alternative

“My kingdom,” said Jesus, “doesn’t consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king.”  – John 18:36 We’re coming up to a time when we remember the casualties of … More Remembrance, War and Conflict

The Mercy Seat The 17th October has been a special day for the last 17 years.  At 6.50pm on a Sunday evening in 1995 in The Salvation Army hall in Irvine, my home town, I knelt at the ‘mercy seat.’ I had been moving towards this point for around 8 or so months, having been … More 17th October

I’ve been giving thought to the ‘construct’ of my spiritual life post-Army.  You may or may not know that Salvationists live by what you’d call a set of vows, a covenant.  As a former officer, I’d been living by the ‘Soldier’s Covenant’ as well as the ‘Officer’s Covenant’.    The first of those is a … More Companions of the Heart?

“Too long at ease in Zion I’ve been content to dwell While multitudes are dying And sinking into Hell. I can no more be careless And say there’s nought to do. The fields are ripe to harvest, But labourers are few. Here am I, my Lord, send me. Here am I, my Lord, send me. … More ‘Too long at ease in Zion…’

Once you’ve experienced it, you’re ruined for life.  Nothing else will do, nothing else will match it and everything else seems a  shadow in comparison.  Sometimes we’ve found it by accident, sometimes we’ve planted it and sometimes it has developed as the only appropriate response to a mission setting. I’m talking about ‘simple church’ by … More Organically Simple

So, I mentioned this the other day….Booth’s vision of a neo-monastic movement within the Salvation Army.  To be honest, I think it would have been better had it been a real vision of what the Army was to be about…It is a piece very much in SA parlance, but anyway, it makes for fascinating reading … More Booth on Neo-Monasticism!

Bonhoeffer’s amazing quote: ‘The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount.  Its high time men and women banded together to do this.’ ‘New monasticism’ has long been a fascination…ever since the day when … More ‘…new type of monasticism…’

I started to notice my aversion to this kind of talk in ‘deepest, darkest Aberdeen.’ Distasteful language which spoke of something that had failed generations of people in that place, that spoke no hope into anything. Something that filled most people with cynicism, made them critical, filled them with detached disinterest. You see, there in … More Mind Your Language!