Virtual Methodist

My son has had a rubbish week (and I am being polite in my use of words here). He's in the run up to his AS levels and may be forced to miss some of them because of a freak chain of injuries that ultimately have left him needing major reconstructive surgery on his right shoulder - and yes he is right handed. He's having an MRI this morning in preparation for that, but even before the full extent of his injury became clear he was having a hard time getting any kind of a fair deal from the examinations board, probably making his road to his preferred profession (ironically medicine) a much more protracted one. And in the light of that NOTHING else that I have to deal with is a priority... (so if you are expecting some form or report off me in the next few days - forget it!) Indeed there is nothing else that I can do or achieve in this life that compares with the honour and duty of being the father to my two boys... That became even clearer today as I talked to a girl whose hu...

It's that time of the year again when every space in my diary is taken up by church councils, meetings, and conferences and I wonder what would have happened, if the church in Antioch, that we read about in Acts 11: 19-30, worked the same way as our churches today... Chair: OK... OK... Order... I’d like to welcome you all to the Antioch Church Council meeting. And lets just open with a word of prayer: Lord Thank you that we’re all here... We pray for those who aren’t and we pray that you’d keep our minds on the job in hand... Amen. Right... Lets get down to business... Alexander: About time too... there’s a gladiatorial show down at the Amphitheatre... I want to see the second half... Chair: OK Alexander... Now I would invite our secretary to read the minutes of the last meeting... Secretary: Meeting of the Antioch Church Council, on the ides of March 35 AD. Those present: Alexander, Anna, Simon, Thomas, Barnabas, Agabus... Chair: I think we can accept the names as read can’t w...

I could never be said to be a staunch supporter of DUP politics, or particularly of Ian Paisley Junior, but I have felt a little uneasy about the headlong pursuit of him by the baying pack of media hounds recently. Yes he seems to have been receiving more full time salaries than it would seem possible to deserve... Yes his handling of the Giant's Causeway shenanigans has more than a wiff of self-interest in it... Yes his constituency lobbying during the St Andrew's talks seems a tad inappropriate... and his personal financial affairs seem a little nepotistic... But I do wonder whether the media only noticed all of this because of who his father is. One conspiracy theorist recently suggested to me that his comments about homosexuality offended key people in the media (because we all know that those in the media are predominantly homosexual, being the sub-text). Another suggested that he has been fingered for attack by someone within the party. Anyway... for whatever reason, it h...

When I was young (which wasn't yesterday) I liked heavy metal music. But with some of my Christian contemporaries and elders it was frowned on. The Satanic overtones of some groups never particularly endeared them to the Christian community... And personally I was never a great fan of groups like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and KISS (who I was reliably informed at the time were actually Knights, or Kids, depending on who you talked to, in Satanic Service). But some people tried to tell me that even the acts I did like recorded strange messages on their tracks that you picked up subliminally via back-tracks i.e. messages recorded in such a way that you could only hear them when you played a vinyl record (remember them) backwards... But in all honestly I could never hear these backwards messages until someone told me exactly what I was listening for... A bit like that dog on "That's Life" that said "Sausages!" You don't know what I'm talking about now, ...

Over recent years North Down has been regularly referred to as the “Gold Coast” because of it’s relative affluence in comparison to the rest of Northern Ireland, leading some to say that the only social division in the area is between the "haves and have-yachts". But now it seems as if the term “the Gold Coast” may have some basis in fact, due to the results of an unparalleled geological survey revealing that the area has the conditions which suggests that there may be seams of gold in the local bedrock. Local residents seem divided over whether this is a good thing, but Nigel Dodds, the local minister for enterprise, trade and investment, is unsurprisingly, very upbeat about the possibilities this raises for the local economy… perhaps more so now that the signature project at the so-called Titanic Quarter has failed to gain the 25 million pounds lottery funding it was angling for under the “Living Landmarks Programme.” It remains to be seen as to whether this rejection will...