Tag: church
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Even Manchester’s Mayor Wants a Job in London
You are drawn to success. We all want comfort, success, glory, prestige. And temporal kingdoms offer that. Throughout history there have been “great cities,” climbing to the sky, offering a tower to commune with greatness: Babel, Nineveh, Babylon, Rome. And, of course, here in the UK—London. Andy Burnham once said: “[politics] has been too London-centric…
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Promises for a Ruined Reputation
You may be reading this because you know the huge pain of a ruined reputation. The Bible doesn’t shy away from how difficult this experience is: Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. (Psalm 69:20) Here,…
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Optimal Inefficiency
All the pressure is on to be efficient. Hit the tickets on time. Get on top of AI. Don’t fall behind. We’ve all heard that things can be either fast or good or cheap, but not two at once. Modern Manchester wants all three from you at the same time. But not only is embracing…
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God’s Not Waiting to Vent
God is not frustrated with you, waiting to vent. He doesn’t have mountains of pent up anger and frustration. If you come to him, he doesn’t need to unload on you before you can both be square. Other people in your life are like that. And—at least to some extent—you are like that. Human beings…
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I Don’t Feel Good Enough
Everything around you, and inside you, is screaming that you have to measure up. You need to meet a certain standard. You need to achieve something. They are all wrong. Those voices either crush you because you fail, or turn you into a proud, self-righteous person. Neither leads anywhere good. So, those voices aren’t just…
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God is Good. I Am Not.
God’s positive attitude to you doesn’t depend on you—not even on your faith. So much so that in Our Father, when explaining the request about forgiveness, Martin Luther—the “justified by faith alone” guy—doesn’t even use the word “faith” once! In life, people are so used to conditional relationship and qualified love, that God’s unconditional, unqualified,…
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That Heaviness Feels True. It Isn’t.
Some days feel heavy.Everything feels bad—or just flat and pointless.Even small things feel pointless or too much to bear. And in those moments, it doesn’t just feel bad—it feels true. It isn’t. One in five adults in Manchester struggle with their mental health. That matters, because people and their experiences matter. But it also tells…
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When Love Must Refuse Communion
Sincere Christians, who genuinely love Jesus and one another, but sincerely believe God is saying different things when they read the Bible should not take the Lord’s Supper with one another. Perhaps, reading that sentence, you want to respond with one of these very common replies: The heart of the matter is this: What does…
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Why the Crowd Is Wrong
There are so many churches. So many religions. So many claims. Which one is right? The question is not: Which group is biggest?But rather: What is God actually saying? A wise man called Martin Chemnitz once observed: That is exactly the pressure everyone thinking about “truth” feels today. Our church practices close communion, meaning that…
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Stop Trying Harder
All the voices around you tell you to deliver, excel, perform. The voices in your head say the same. Two widespread, fundamental misunderstandings of what church is feed these voices. The first is that church is just another platform, another facet, where you can perform and shine. Either to compensate for failure in another part…