January 14, 2013
‘Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear’ was the ominous graffitti greeting sprayed on a wall in Athens and quoted by Jim Memory of Redcliffe College in Gloucester, at the European Missions Consultation I wrote about last week. Jim was presenting British mission leaders with a sober picture of four major challenges which Europe faced, […]
January 7, 2013
Best wishes, folks, for the new year. Seems like we’ll need them. Because frankly the prospects are not so good – for this year, and for the foreseeable future. And it’s time we faced some issues squarely. That's not an optimistic start. But we are not called to be optimists. We are called to be […]
December 24, 2012
Stars, in case you haven’t noticed, are really ‘in’ right now. Usually we talk of stars coming ‘out’ but at Christmas they are really ‘in’–as street decorations, atop Christmas trees, in shop windows and on Christmas cards. Especially those cards with the Wise Men following the star to Bethlehem, stopping over the stable where Jesus […]
December 17, 2012
Last Wednesday evening–12.12.12–John Calvin’s cathedral in Geneva was filled with worshippers longing for fresh renewal and revival. The cathedral gathering was the culmination of five days of prayer and inspiration, including a two-day ‘school of restoration and reformation’. Jean-Claude Chabloz, pastoral worker at the Swiss parliament, opened the evening explaining the significance of 12 December […]
December 10, 2012
Today Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, is in Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the European Union, along with his colleagues Jose Manuel Barroso (EU Commission President) and Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament). Last Wednesday morning in Brussels, Van Rompuy talked openly about his Christian faith […]
December 3, 2012
In my opinion, the best cure for grumbling about our present financial crisis is to spend a few days in the two-thirds world. After a week in Dakar, Senegal, I was confronted this weekend with the enormous inequality of wealth on our planet, walking past shop windows in central London. For Christmas is almost here. […]
November 26, 2012
About forty years ago, the evangelical movement stirred from a century-long hibernation. Authors and speakers like John Stott, Francis Schaeffer, René Padilla and Samuel Escobar awakened awareness that the gospel carried implications beyond evangelism and church planting. The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 was a watershed event in the modern history of evangelicalism. […]
November 19, 2012
If Egyptian-born Hamed Abdel-Samad is right, Islam today is seriously ill and is culturally and socially in retreat. Like the Titanic, considered invincible, Islam is facing sudden global collapse with dire consequences for the West, he warns. Last week in Spain I sat in on a gathering of folk related to Hope for Europe engaged […]
November 14, 2012
Despite an aggressive and negative campaign in recent weeks against the nomination of Dr Tonio Borg to become the new EU Commissioner for health and Consumer Policy, yesterday’s three-hour hearing in the European Parliament in Brussels resulted in the expectation that his nomination will be given the green light. As this hearing was highlighted in […]
November 12, 2012
November 11 is Remembrance Day in British Commonwealth countries for all fallen servicemen and women. Hence the red poppies worn over the past few days on the BBC. Initially it was a day of remembrance for those killed during World War I, many of them in Flanders fields in Belgium where ‘the poppies blow/between the […]
November 5, 2012
As far as celebrations go, this has been a very crowded week. In Britain and some former colonies today is being celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day. As it falls on a Monday this year, bonfires and fireworks were mostly lit over the weekend. But for anyone not raised in this tradition, it must appear as […]
October 29, 2012
This past weekend 1700 years ago, a military battle took place just outside Rome the outcome of which profoundly shaped western history and still continues to influence our world. While not militarily strategic, the battle of Milvian Bridge led to consequences that for many seemed to be direct answer to prayer. The early centuries of […]
