The Spirit of prophecy and renewal

Westbourne Grove Church, which I help to lead, is part of the Forge Sphere of churches in the south of England, which used to be part of Salt & Light, which is a network of “neocharismatic Evangelical” churches associated with the British New Church Movement.

So no surprise that the Forge summer camp at beautiful Ashburnham Place in East Sussex had some serious charismatic energy to it, boosted by rumours of a “quiet revival.”

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How does the practical teaching at the end of Romans relate to the letter as a whole?
In traditional Reformed interpretation, Romans 12:1-15:7 is regarded simply as a piece of Christian parenesis—that is, practical and ethical instruction or exhortation to be followed in all times, in all places. The letter tends to get sectioned thematically: justification by faith in… ()
Who did not confess “Jesus Christ coming in flesh” and why?
I don’t want to make this an issue about trinitarianism; it is to my mind simply a matter of literary-historical perspective. Seriously. But what was the author of the Johannine letters—let’s call him John—getting at when he warned that “many deceivers went out into the world, those… ( | 4 comments)
In the form of a god: Jesus and Dionysus
At the beginning of Euripides’ play Bacchae, the god Dionysus—the god of “wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre,” according to Wikipedia—enters and delivers a monologue. He identifies himself as “son of… ()
Why the gospel was not for the whole world
The New Testament gospel came in two parts—two proclamations distinct from each other with respect to content, audience, and geographical reach.The first proclamation was addressed to Israel. It was that the God of Israel would soon “judge” his unrighteous people and inaugurate a new order under… ( | 6 comments)
God and the chaos monster (and the climate crisis)
There is an argument that there is a third creation account in the Old Testament, in addition to the two creation accounts of Genesis 1-2, in which God as storm deity defeats the chaos monster of the sea in order for dry land to emerge. Dahood, notably, argued that translation of Psalm… ()
A prophet is not without honour...
I was at a fairly mainstream but non-traditional Anglican Church in east London on Sunday—mostly singles and young families. We had a good, thoughtful, and well presented sermon about the offence taken by the people of Nazareth at the wisdom and mighty works of Jesus (Matt. 13:53-58). I tried… ()
Holes in the story: did the crowds turn against Jesus at the end?
Ever wondered why the Jerusalem crowds turned against Jesus so abruptly—cheering him into the city at the start of the week, yelling for him to be crucified at the end of it? Lots of scholars think it all very improbable. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first some reflections on a hermeneutic… ()