I’ve placed in front of you Life and Good Death and Evil. Deuteronomy 30:15 (Message Version) The Bible’s a story about God and people. A generous God who loves, and loves to bless people – trying to get them to live fully under his blessing now and forever. He lays it out clearly time and again that really there are only two ways to live; Blessing or curse, (real life – or death). Blessing or cursing Some people choose the path, the life that is death – of curse and cursing: Something goes wrong, they look to who we can blame, get bitter, shake a fist. We can curse governments, institutions, the banks, because ‘someone’ should do something about it. This cursing will lead you to think in a scarcity mentality. Protect, conserve, hoard, safeguard. There’s not enough to go round. Unless I want to spend it on me and mine. As the election looms I don’t recall hearing anyone talk about how blessed we are on this country. We need to get out more! We curse the immigrants, the […]

J John recently sent this article through to me, very timely! Why should Christians be involved in politics? Some Christians argue that it is not our business to be involved in politics. First, because we have other matters on which to concentrate: getting people to heaven is more important than trying to straighten out a fallen world. Second, because politics is so corrupt that we must keep a distance, lest we become contaminated. A third argument is that God is sovereign, so he can be trusted to take care of politics. We have to be very careful that appealing to God’s almighty power is not a convenient excuse for avoiding our own responsibility. The Bible says a great deal about humans being God’s vice-regents in the world and one of God’s first commissions to humanity is for us to rule, subdue, and be fruitful in the earth. This is not only significant for how we live our own lives but for how we engage society as a whole. In fact, much of Britain’s governmental system was developed using Christian principles. […]

Advance peek at a fabulous article by J John that will be in the Church Times next week. Great to read as election fever(?) grips the nation! The awakening of the religious in politics? British politicians, Alistair Campbell famously informed us, ‘do not do God’. At this election time a related question ought to be asked: ‘Do the religious do politics?’ The answer, it seems, is that they do and increasingly so – something that ought to give the political parties pause for thought. Particular interest ought to be focused on that substantial sector that I belong to – the Evangelicals. In the UK Evangelicals tend to be the worst publicists for themselves (humility may be a great virtue but it’s a lousy basis for PR) and their growth here has been largely overlooked. Yet according to the Evangelical Alliance there may be around 2 million Evangelicals in the UK and they represent the only segment of the British church that is growing. Indeed, on current trends it will not be long before almost all of British Christianity outside Catholicism […]

On Sunday 28th March I’m going to run the Wilmslow Half Marathon to raise money for two great causes, rebuilding a Haiti Hospital and the Message here in the UK.

Lindz from Lz7 teaching on being an effective evangelist. Manchester is his adopted city, he is a missionary to Manchester! Sept 27th his ‘this little light’ song will be released. The government are right behind it: ‘Shine’ campaign = film young people doing something good. Put it on the website. Momentum is building! He has been doing evangelism full time for ten years. Employed by Luis Palau festival to preach to their youth, some massive crowds. But the tough stuff is When you go onto a classroom etc with his work through the Message – there are walls to be broken down Mk 1;17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men. Ever been fishing!? Hard work! Chucking out the net is dirty work, and you need some skills, but ordinary people can do it. When he did a sports science degree – he learned a definition of SKILL. Skill is a learned ability to bring about a predetermined result with maximum certainty often with minimal outlay of time, energy or both. So: do your […]