Ah Ireland, a country the size of Indiana, and with the population of New York City. And one of the most green and beautiful places in the whole world. No wonder they call it the Emerald Isle. Ann and I went on a sentimental journey to Ireland for our 40th anniversary last month. Sentimental not because we had been there before, even while living in England for 3 years. No we went because we had been told again and again... Read more

Here is a snapshot review by Patrick one of the leaders of the Irish Biblical Institute of the seminar I did for them June 2…. Cut and paste this into your browser. https://faithinireland.wordpress.com/ Read more

Here is a link to my various talks at Tyndale in Toronto last April. You’ll need to cut and paste the link into your browser. Happy Listening…. BW3 http://www.tyndale.ca/seminary/wesley-studies/annual-symposium/2017-wesley-symposium/audio Read more

Proclamation. This is especially our Methodist heritage. Without it, the other two activities of the Church are incomplete. Without it Christians are like a doctor who studied medicine and then spent all his time taking his own temperature. It is these things that make a Church. A Church without them is a barren vine, only fit to be thrown on the gardener’s bonfire. And there is one way to this active Christian life. There is one way in which the... Read more

The Bible speaks one word to us—Christ, God’s love for people in Christ. That is why I am apt to be impatient with those who talk about hearing in the rushing breeze that God is love. I have never yet heard of a rushing breeze that converted anyone. But I have seen people brought to their knees in penitence by the story of Christ. I have known people who were impressed and awed by the beauty of nature, but I... Read more

For my part, I am not impressed by any fine “experiences” that people may have. I am not very interested in the state of their soul or their spiritual barometers. All that has to be submitted to as searching a test as we can make, the test of conformity with God’s Word, in our case of course, pre-eminently with Jesus Christ himself. That of course cuts both ways. It cuts against the folk that are all emotion and no motion.... Read more

Commenting on Rev. 11.8 Kingsley Barrett says this: Sodom means sin. It has given its name to a particularly unpleasant perversion of human functions. I was interested to see in Tuesday’s Times a paragraph noting the publication of a new book demonstrating that “homosexuality, adultery, beastiality, and fornication are all explicitly and consistently repudiated throughout the Bible.” What a sign of our times that it should be necessary to write such a book! As if anyone could be in any... Read more

Theology is right if it starts with Jesus; it is wrong if it starts anywhere else. The first, but not the second of these statements is, I know, an oversimplification; it is possible to start with Jesus and take many turnings on the way. But it will not do….it is still true that people start their theology in strange places and build it up on foundations other than Jesus. There are professional theologians who do it. It is sadder when... Read more

Year by year, when our Church membership numbers are published, there is one particularly distressing column. We do not mourn those who have died, they have been promoted to the Church Triumphant. We are not unduly concerned about the trickle which is described as having gone to other Churches. We regret their folly, but we cannot think them really lost. The real grieving figure is that of the thousands who have simply “ceased to be members.” Some people say they... Read more

The Church lives by the Word of God, that is why theology is ministerium verbi divini. I suspect we are in danger of forgetting among our many interests the creative and renewing power of the Word of God; that the sermon is the means of the real presence of Christ. Of course I am not speaking of religious and moral chats. I am speaking of the manifestation of the living Word through the spoken word from the written word in... Read more