Virtual Methodist

Whilst the great and the good were round the corner in the Waterfront Hall rattling their jewellery in appreciation of Van the East Belfast Free Man, I was in the cosier surroundings of the MAC Theatre watching an uncomfortable play based in East Belfast... or at least the outer reaches of East Belfast, my former "parish" of Dundonald/Ballybeen. This isn't a review as such, since there is only one matinee and one evening performance left, although if you can get a ticket I would recommend that you should... it is an excellent production, with four very good performances. I would particularly recommend it if you aren or are considering becoming, a minister... Earlier in the run the blogger Alan Meban posted a perceptive review , and in conversation with his wife, fellow cleric Cheryl, the suggestion arose that perhaps theological training colleges should have taken out a block booking. I doubt that happened, but there were a small coterie of clerics in the audience last ...

I've been using this book for a few months now as a devotional prior to going onto the wards of the Ulster Hospital as chaplain, ever since a number of them appeared there as a resource to share with those  wrestling with cancer. Its authors have experienced cancer themselves directly and within their families, and have a long pedigree of working within the sphere of prayer for healing, and this book finds its origin in a frustration that there was little written from an explicitly Christian perspective as they faced cancer. The title, tone and even the physical form of the book marks it out as being aimed primarily at women, but there is plenty in here that is useful for anyone going through the whole testing-diagnosis-treatment continuum of care, and those accompanying them on that journey, be it as chaplain, pastor, family member or friend. That is especially true of some of the prayers at the end of the book. The folksy "thought for the day" style will not appeal to...

Too much to do... too little time... So today's round-up of pages that have caught my eye is more rudimentary that usual... But hope your find it interesting/entertaining/challenging (delete as applicable)... A BIBLICAL APPROACH TO WALLOPING YOUR WOMAN? The media has been filled with the very public unravelling of the relationship of Nigella Lawson and Charles Saachi , raising questions of what constitutes domestic abuse. So it was against this background that I was slightly disconcerted to find this piece in the Huffington post that purports to point to a site which advocates Christian husbands spanking their wives to maintain a Biblical marriage... So that is why Evangelical Alliance and others are advocating a "Biblical approach to marriage" in the face of marriage equality legislation!? Now I know my Bible fairly well, while I have never read any of the "Forty Shades of Grey" books, but this seems to owe more to the latter than the former. I have not ...

Another wee excerpt from Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor": "People would rather talk to the pastor than to God and so it happens that without anyone actually intending it, prayer is pushed to the sidelines.  And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the Cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now. People love us when we this. It is flattering to be put in the place of God. It feels wonderful to be treated in this godlike way. And it is work that we are generally quite good at." There is so much packed into a few lines here... but it essentially comes down to how we as pastors model things for those who have been entrusted to our care. Do we model  The Primacy of Prayer, or The Minister as Mini-Messi...

A wee while back I posted a piece on Facebook by American Pastor Gary Brinn, purporting to be a list of "Secrets that your Pastor Can't Share in a Sermon" . It's a variation on a theme that has been doing the rounds of the internet for years (and probably existed in print form before that). I suggested, and then rapidly retracted the suggestion, that maybe I would publish my own list... Well, after sober reflection (?) here are a few things that, were I an electronic device, would be printed in 6 languages on a large piece of paper; no-one ever reads them but most users work them out eventually. By the same token, most of my congregation have worked most of these out with me, whether or not I have explicitly stated them... however many of them probably apply to others, and might help anyone unfortunate enough to end up with me as their cleric in the future: 1) Your jokes about me only working one day a week are not funny... not even the first time round... and ...

OK... I'm back... My lack of blog output over recent months was partly by design (taking a break) and circumstances (requiring the prioritisation of other things in the real world). However, I'm back on the beat again, and fully intend getting back on the blog. Those who are fortunate enough to be my friends on facebook or followers (makes me sound like some sort of guru) on twitter (which I still don't really understand), will probably have noticed the unending stream of complete rubbish that I have been reading over the summer. Generally on holiday I go for a blend of trash fiction, usually of the historical or detective-type, some biography and a bit of history with a single theological book thrown in there to allow me to keep my mind from going totally flabby. Well this summer my theological work-out was Walter Brueggemann's "The Prophetic Imagination" a book which I first read 20 years ago as part of a 3rd year theology degree "Prophecy and ...

OK... Warning. I'm about to rant again... This time it is due to a piece of junk mail that landed on my doorstep yesterday... The sheer amount of unsolicited mail that goes straight from letterbox to blue bin is usually enough to trigger a rant... But on this occasion it was because of a kind offer by Sarah Muggeridge to provide me with some assistance to deal with the implications of the government's " End of Life Care Strategy " published last summer. Now I don't know whether this offer is coming to me in my role as chaplain to the local hospital, where I am actually on the multi-disciplinary palliative care education sub-group (the title is longer than the meetings), but the fact that it was sent to the church's PO Box address, suggests that the name and address was gleaned by some web-crawling bot, that has cribbed my name and address from either the local or national church website. With that in mind... one general point... Any junk mail senders take note...