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!

The biggest message that has been impressing itself upon me from various directions is that of the balance of three ‘movements’ of life. It is very much discernable in a whole variety of neo-monastic writings (such as ‘A Passionate Life’, ‘Cave Refectory Road’ and ‘Reaching Out’ and others). By ‘movements’, I mean our movement towards … More 3

I’ve been laying relatively low on the blogging front of late.  There has been a lot going on with regards our future. Many of you will have grasped that I’ve only just begun a 5 year (extendable) appointment as Ministry Team Leader at Trinity Church in Gosforth (a Methodist/URC parnership church), having been leading in … More Back to Blogging

I’ve been enjoying the challenge over the last few weeks of preaching on subjects that folks in the congregation have asked to be dealt with.  We’ve covered giving, the Great Commandment, Hell, the Brutality of God in the Old Testament, and would Jesus recognise today’s church?  (Light topics, I know!) However, I’ve been keeping the … More New Hymn: We are People of the Kingdom