Tearfund Scotland

I had another encouraging meeting with Lynne Paterson at Tearfund Scotland yesterday.

We are hosting a lunch next Thursday, 20 May, 12.45, at the Augustine United Church, 41 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. Onone and Jean-Marc will speak on Tearfund's response to the earthquake in Haiti and Lynne will briefly introduce some of the Tearfund resources for local congregations: Connected Church, Just People, Discovery.
If you are in Edinburgh next Thu please come along. If you are a commissioner at the General Assembly this will be the best free lunch of the fringe week, so please come along.

The Best Sentence

I've done it! I found the best sentence in the 546 pages (approx) of this year's volume of reports to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Page 4/5, section 1.19, in a quote from Vincent Donovan, in Christianity Re-discovered, 'the time for endless meetings and seminars about missionary strategy is over ... "just go and talk to people about God and the Christian message"'.

What impact would it have for the gospel if the Moderator were to constitute the General Assembly and then charge all present to go home and spend the week talking to others about Jesus?

Preaching re-imagined

There's a great post from my friend Albert on his blog, read it here.

Albert is responding to a post by Krish Kandiah on preaching as part of the biblefresh initiative, read that post here. I'll get to commenting of Krish's post soon.

I think Albert is right, we need to see preaching more intimately connected to the life of the congregation and the Christian than it often can be at present.
We need to encourage and affirm those hearing sermons to respond with questions and comments.
We need to create opportunities for this to happen in a safe environment, i.e. one where the preacher does not feel 'got at'.

This is a real challenge to us as preacher, and a significant change in engagement with preaching for those who listen. But I think it is worth it.

Christian Campaigning

I have been pleased to read the report on 'The purpose and nature of campaigning - a Christian perspective', Church and Society, section 11.2.2 (2/61)

For about ten years now at various General Assemblies I've challenged the practice of approving of unlawful protesting at Faslane against the retention and deployment of Trident. Last year I achieved agreement from the Council to prepare this report, and I think it is very good.

The historical review and the theological comment on the responsibility of Christians to campaign on behalf of the poor and victims of injustice is really good and timely.

One major point for the report which I'm not sure about is the claim that it is legitimate to use unlawful means of campaigning where 'the immediate purpose may be to promote public awareness or keep an issue before public attention.' (11.2.4.3 2/64)
For me, the only justifiable cause for unlawful campaigning is where the democratic process is denied to some in the community or is being abused by those elected to serve. To break the law, simply to keep a matter in the view of the public is not something, in the age of blogs, twitter and facebook, that can seriously be proposed as a legitimate use of unlawful campaigning.

So, Ian and Ewen, thanks for the report, but still some work to do here.

Scripture References

I found a great new piece of code reftagger - get it here.


If you use blogs or other sites and include references to Scripture this is a great way of having the text you refer to pop up whenever you move the cursor over the link.

Thanks to Charlie Cameron on whose blog I first saw this used. Read Charlie's blog at St Andrew's Bellsmyre

General Assembly 2010

I'm a late addition to our Presbytery's list of commissioners so I only received my blue book this week.

There's a pdf file of the text on the accompanying cd, and it says a lot about the church that the cover picture on the file is in black and white. Let's see who wants to start the comments on that one!

Over 500 pages, I think the key reports will be on Article III and the Council of Ministries, that not to say there won't be good stuff in other reports. So, I'll post some blog thoughts as I come to them in the book.

Rockin' Blues

When I remember I listen to Paul Jones' Radio 2 show on Monday night, 7 pm, web page here.

A few weeks back Paul had a two show session from Joe Bonamassa which was great. So I bought the new cd while on holiday at Easter time.

If you like blues, blues/rock, guitar music with a great beat, this is a good disc and a great sound. Well worth a listen.

Thanks to Paul Jones for pointing me in this direction.