preaching

What does Oxbridge have to do with Rome, Canterbury and Geneva?

June 18, 2010

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles) It feels good to be getting along to the end of this series on the articles, now that I arrive at the thirty-fifth. Again, this article demonstrates something of the huge change in culture between the Church of the Reformation [...]

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The preacher’s fallacy or, no, the Greeks didn’t have a word for it

February 6, 2010

One of the biggest warning flags in a sermon comes when the preacher says: “Now, in Greek, the word is … which (literally) means …” Sometimes they know what they’re talking about. More often they are about to pull a fast one. There are two sorts of bad exegetical moves the preacher is likely to [...]

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Ox and ass and we three kings: Christmas harmonies and evangelical humbug

December 12, 2009

A couple of days ago Ben Witherington posted on the Christmas story. In all sorts of ways it is a very good example of a typical evangelical “back to basics” approach to Christmas. Essentially the Christmas story needs stripping of all its later accretions, and then the meaning will be clearer. Lurking somewhere unstated in [...]

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Baldy, bad boys and the big bear: a strange Bible meme

August 12, 2009
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David Ker has followed up his bad boy bible reading approach with a reading of this classic story from the Elisha cycle. From there he went up to Bethel, and while he was on the road, some small boys came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Hurry up, baldy!’ they shouted. ‘Come on [...]

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The irrelevant Bible?

June 14, 2009

It’s always interesting to have congregations at least some – if not many of whom – (one may presume) question the relevance of the BIble to contemporary life. Today was our annual civic service, and the timing of it meant that it replaced the principal service in our town centre church. We decided as a [...]

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Spinning the sermon in advance

June 13, 2009

According to this press release on Virtue Online (a site with a not terribly accurate name) Anglican church politics has caught up and surpassed the secular. We have, sadly, got used to politicians getting their spin-doctors to brief their announcements in advance. Now it seems that church pressure groups are doing the same: The launch [...]

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