futurePRIMITIVE

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I wonder what you were singing yesterday.
I was at a couple of services celebrating Pentecost and the tercentenary of Charles Wesley’s birth. 
Charles was the writer of thousands of hymns in the eighteenth century, providing the musical backbone and lyrical expression of the mission movement Methodism was back then. 
  
(charles wesley, younger brother of john: 1707-1788)
Of course, we […]

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Early in the morning I begin my day with God and with one of my favourite drinks: a powerful espresso.  My time with God is the jolt I need to bring focus to my day and an espresso accompanies this so well.
At the moment I’m drinking cafedirect’s rich roast (a fair trade coffee - strength 5): place […]

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I’ve just been ordering my next books for reading from Amazon and it made me wonder what you’re reading at the moment.
Here’s my present list:

Exiles by Michael Frost
The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch
The Human Being by Walter Wink

If you are reading, or have read, any of these it would be great to hear […]

Someone recently asked me how I dealt with the grumpiness of people over the different kinds of worship we’ve been trying.  Truth be told, all we’ve done is changed the order of things around.  It’s hardly the embryonic stirrings of a dynamic movement. 
It struck met that it’s more like children who quite like the idea […]

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I’m on to the last part of my busy Sunday and a visit to Nicolson Square, another of the four churches looking at the possibility of coming together to create a new Methodist church in Edinburgh.
It was a chance for anyone to dig deeper into anything I’ve been sharing over the past eight or […]

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In my last post I mentioned that Sunday was a busy day.  After the morning worship service I went on to Leith for a special church council to discuss the document outlining the future church. 
This was not an easy thing to put together because as soon as you write something down and print it […]

Sunday was a busy day.
I thought I’d tell you a little bit about what’s happening here as Sunday took me to three of the five churches that I’m working with as they explore a missional future together.
Four of the five are looking to come together as a new church in the city of Edinburgh.  The […]

Christopher McCluskey claims that “Imbalance occurs when we don’t examine our most deeply held values, when we have no clear vision for our lives … We simply become driven by circumstances.  We pursue someone else’s vision for us … We deal with the urgent rather than the important�.[1] 
Although I have to wonder if there is […]

Annie Dillard asks the question:  
‘Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands?  Because it is up to you’.[1] 
And so you have to keep asking those vexing questions no-one else around appears to want to posit or want to air. Dillard […]

I recently attended a couple of synods.  
My wife tells me I should be more positive about the Methodist Church when it comes to meeting like these. 
I try very hard.

It’s left me wondering about what happens when a large group of people get together like this.  I can have great conversations with individual Methodists and with […]