Virtual Methodist

I post this, in part, by way of a thank you to my mother in law, 20 years down the line.  It's an adaptation of something I wrote for the Methodist Newsletter for December and shared with our own congregation last Sunday as part of our Home Missions Service, but anyone who has been listening to me over the past 20 years or following this blog in more recent years, will have heard/seen bits of it before. I make no apology for that... It is too important to say once, and I will say it again... Twenty years ago, when I was a mere ministerial student helping out at Sydenham Methodist, my mother in law gave me an early Christmas present that not only helped me in an emergency, but has also helped shape my ministry from that day. She had arrived on the Friday before Christmas, but early the following Sunday morning I got a phone call  saying that Brian Fletcher, the minister at the time, had taken ill and asking me to speak at the two services that day… Since I was only a st...

Today's offering on God Morning Ulster's "Thought for the Day", my last for a wee while... Have you ever said “There aren’t enough hours in the day” or “there aren’t enough days in the week”? Well now there aren’t enough weeks in the year… Because at the moment we are apparently in the middle of, not only the well publicized Christian Aid Week and Community Relations Week , but also, Choose Charity Shops Week - a nationwide campaign to encourage people to donate goods to charity shops; Dying Matters Awareness Week , aimed at encouraging individuals and organisations to take simple steps that can make a big difference to people when they are dying or bereaved, and International Food Allergy Awareness Week , an initiative of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Alliance … a group name that was a significant challenge to say live on radio at 6.55am… All of these are important issues but it does speak to me of a world where, despite the proliferation of ways of commun...

Platform for Change is a diverse group of people from across different sectors, political perspectives and communities across Northern Ireland who have come together for one reason... Wanting systemic change in the political and civic culture of this province... Over the past few years they have hosted a number of events looking at the education debacle, environmental policy, the economy and, core to everything here, community relations. Sadly, because of other commitments I haven't made it to a single event yet, but have followed and contributed to discussions via the virtual world... With regard to community relations there has been a growing sense of foreboding that there is not much political will to get beyond the much touted "benign apartheid" that we currently experience (no matter what statements are made to the choir about Catholic schools by the First Minister). Many within the group have particularly expressed grave concerns regarding the current DUP/Sinn Fein...