‘Food, Glorious Food’, written by Lionel Bart, is the opening song from the 1960s West End and Broadway musical (and 1968 film) Oliver (based on the book Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, of course). The song is sung from the point of view of the children of a workhouse for orphans where they are forced […]

Last Sunday Julia and I made a nostalgic trip (for me anyway) back to Greenford, Middlesex, and specifically to my home church, Greenford Baptist Church – a church which has experienced a significant renaissance in recent years becoming a very diverse, lively, multicultural church in comparison to the somewhat traditional very ‘white’ church of my […]

Last Sunday, for our second Sabbatical Sunday, we visited Brookside Church in Lower Earley. Originally part of what was known as the King’s Church, Brookside became an independent church in 2001. Essentially an evangelical, charismatic church, Brookside is known for its close working relationships with the churches and charities of what is now known as […]

Julia and I are on a three-month long sabbatical from (more-or-less) the beginning of January until the end of March. It is NOT a holiday, let me hasten to add, but a time when we will be working hard six days a week to hopefully get the bulk of our doctoral theses written up. Every […]

It was the late John Wimber (founder of the Vineyard Network of Churches) who suggested that ‘Faith’ is spelled R.I.S.K. Julia and I were reminded of this at the beginning of this New Year when we read some words of Willie James Jennings (Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School) […]

A week plus into 2023 seems an odd time to write about New Year Resolutions. I do so deliberately because by now most of those resolutions will have been broken. Julia’s ‘dry January’ resolution lasted a week … and yours you ask? Well the only New Year Resolution that I have ever managed to keep […]