Do you see how far you've come?
Graeme Shanks
Date posted: 5 Dec 2025
It’s a testing time of year for many of us. I mean that quite literally.
If you’re at school, you’ll soon receive an end of term report card. If you’re a student, you’ll likely have upcoming exams. If you’re a worker, you’ll likely have an annual review looming on the horizon. Our daily lives are full of metrics by which success is measured and goals are set. Have we progressed or regressed?
To all music leaders...
Ben Slee
Date posted: 4 Dec 2025
Dear Music Leader,
From time to time, we all need encouragement in our ministry of leading sung worship for God’s people. Perhaps you feel that acutely during this Christmas season with additional services, keen awareness of our limitations and the weighty longing for those we lead to encounter Christ. Here are three reminders from the Scriptures of how God is at work to encourage you:
How to make festivities accessible - for all
Kay Morgan-Gurr
Date posted: 3 Dec 2025
Christmas is coming, and it’s looming fast! It’s also a time when those with disabilities and additional needs struggle with accessibility.
We love everything glittery, and twinkly. We cram everyone into whatever space we have. The noise is much greater. And we insist on colour combinations and fonts that should never get past the editing stage of our Christmas invites, slides on screens and our social media.
everyday evangelism
‘Tis the season to be… invitational!’
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 3 Dec 2025
When Paul charged Timothy to preach the word in season and out of season, he wasn’t referring to the calendar or the climate. Rather, that we experience times of openness to the Bible’s message, as well as periods of stubborn resistance. Timothy was to press on, in both “seasons”.
The Christmas “season” annually generates gospel opportunities that we would be foolish to miss though. The church is like a striker facing an open goalmouth, on the six-yard line, with the goalie nowhere in sight! In every church or CU I have ever been part of, in England or Scotland, people from outside the fellowship have accepted invitations to Christmas events, like carol or watchnight services. Christmas does seem to be “in season” – every year.
What a Christlike identity means for a Christian cricketer
Graham Daniels
Date posted: 2 Dec 2025
As the English side prepares to walk out at The Gabba for the second Test match in the Ashes series in Australia, the echoes of Perth (the location of the first Test match) still ring in many minds.
The first Test left wounds: batting collapses, public disappointment, confidence shaken. But for the Christian in the dressing room — and for those of us watching with faith — this moment carries deeper significance.
pastoral care
When those ungodly emotions return
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 2 Dec 2025
As the winter nights draw in, the log burner in our house gets used a little more. In the evenings, the flames dance – towards the end of the night, they diminish – soon there are just embers to be seen – eventually the fire goes out. Sometimes, however, that is not the end of the story. Sometimes – seemingly out of nowhere – the flames revive, and they can be fierce.
Some of us will know something similar in our sanctification. Something happens – our ungodly emotions or words run hot – but, with prayer and a Bible-centred pursuit of change, we become more like Christ. Sometimes the ungodly emotions feel as if they have disappeared; it feels like a victory has been won, but then they seem to re-emerge in a flash. Anger ignites, reviving hurts from the past; jealousy overwhelms as an unwanted memory pops up. Something we thought was long dealt with comes rushing back.
history
O Come, All Ye Faithful
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Dec 2025
Many of us will sing these marvellous words this Christmas from the carol O Come, All Ye Faithful, that was first printed in English in 1751: “God of God, Light of Light, Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb; Very God, Begotten not created.”
The first and third lines of this stanza, the second in the hymn, are clearly dependent upon the wording of the creedal statement issued by the Council of Nicaea (325). They bear witness to the ongoing significance of this turning-point in the history of the church.
imperfect parenting
Advent & the power in waiting
Katie Holloway
Date posted: 30 Nov 2025
Whether you mark it in a formal way or not, Advent is a season of waiting. I don’t think there’s a single child in the country this month who’s not counting “how many sleeps” until Christmas Day, even while their parents are silently hoping for just “a few more sleeps” to get everything done.
Waiting is hard. Though we likely don’t find it as hard to wait for Christmas as our kids (though maybe you do!), as adults we still find waiting hard. Whether we’re waiting for an appointment, to find out some news, for our winter cold to get better, for God to change our circumstances… we don’t like waiting.
Revival, New Age and cultural Christianity
Rani Joshi
Date posted: 29 Nov 2025
As we head into the Advent season, I’m excited to share that we’ve just launched Discovering Jesus. This is a new eight-session video series designed to engage and invite people to watch, covering who Jesus is, the Bible, and topics around faith, identity and culture. It’s particularly helpful for people of Asian heritage, and those of different faiths (or none!) to explore these topics.
The past few months have been busy, writing scripts for this series and speaking at several conferences. Over that time, I’ve been reflecting deeply on what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus versus a cultural Christian. One of the sessions explores what it looks like to genuinely follow Jesus and why some Christians may not necessarily reflect His likeness. Interestingly, this very question arose during the first edition of Discovering Jesus from participants who were curious about what authentic discipleship looks like.
Does the gospel make you dance with joy?
Jonny Pollock
Date posted: 28 Nov 2025
When our family watches social media reels together, there is one clip that reliably makes me groan: The Forrest Frank dance.
Perhaps you know the one; it’s a viral Christian dance that has spread across social media complete with arms flailing, legs bouncing, and faces radiating a grin so wide it seems smug. My children smile at me every time it pops up. I, on the other hand, mutter something about the true nature of Christianity and scroll on. For reasons I cannot quite explain, the sight of that carefree jig makes me a bit grumpy. My kids see joy. I see silliness. They laugh. I roll my eyes.
William Bates at 400: The Presbyterian voice we forgot
Martyn Cowan
Date posted: 27 Nov 2025
The story of the past is inevitably selective and this often results in some individuals being given, perhaps, undue prominence whilst other very significant figures end up being marginalised.
Accounts of later English Puritanism have often ended up focusing on the likes of Richard Baxter (1615–1691), John Bunyan (bap. 1628, d. 1688), and John Owen (1616–1683), leaving others, who in their day were highly significant, to almost disappear from the historian’s view.
letter from Ukraine
Exclusive: I'm in Ukraine now. This is how it feels
Ryan Burton King
Date posted: 26 Nov 2025
These are dark days for Ukraine. And I mean that, in the first instance, quite literally.
As the bleak skies and bitter cold of winter set in, Russia has renewed its strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in a cruel strategy to break the morale of the nation as it swiftly approaches four years since full-scale invasion by its eastern neighbour.
culture watch
Why do we love celebrities?
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 22 Nov 2025
Why do we love to watch celebrities appear on “reality tv”? The recent finale of The Celebrity Traitors, hosted by Claudia Winkleman, was watched by 11million people.
Flicking through the channels, you can watch everything from Celebrity Gogglebox, Celebrity Come Dine with Me, to Celebrity Bake Off, Celebrity Hunted, as well as the classic that is Strictly Come Dancing starring… celebrities! We don’t actually know these people. But we feel like we do, and as shows like Traitors roll out, we might feel like we know them better, and talk about them more, than we do our own families. But what makes us keep coming back for more – and keep on talking about them?
Is there really a ministry recruitment crisis?
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 22 Nov 2025
“Ministry recruitment crisis.” How do those words make you feel? Do they fill you with dread? Panic? Are you tempted to let out a sigh as you mutter that you aren’t surprised?
Back in September, Carrie Sandom, of the Proclamation Trust, told us that there is a fall in the number of men and women coming forward for ministry training. What are we to think? en spoke to key players in the evangelical world, including principals and directors of some of the UK's leading seminaries and colleges.
Orthodoxy & evangelicals – what’s the appeal?
Kenneth Brownell
Date posted: 20 Nov 2025
The news that a church affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) has become Orthodox (see this en article) will have come as a shock to many.
An evangelical Anglican congregation defecting? Possibly we could understand that, since it would be used to formal liturgy and bishops etc; but an FIEC church...!
Is it time to change what children are taught at church?
Jonny Woodbridge
Date posted: 18 Nov 2025
Here’s a question: In your Sunday youth and children’s groups (assuming you have them), what do you teach? And how do you decide what to teach?
I think there are three approaches — all of which I have used. Let’s look through them and consider their strengths and weaknesses.
defending our faith
'The cross is not a flag to wave, but a faith to proclaim'
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 18 Nov 2025
I once visited an Israeli primary school in Jerusalem and looked around a classroom. It was much the same as any classroom in the UK, with desks, pots of crayons, bookshelves, and work displayed on walls. But something caught my attention with one set of arithmetic posters. Addition was not symbolised by the plus sign but by an upside-down letter T.
I asked the headteacher and learned that the tradition goes back to at least the 19th century and was a deliberate avoidance of a sign that otherwise looked like the Christian cross. Not all Israelis follow this convention, but it is common among the more orthodox Jews.
