In Depth:  Adrian Reynolds

Adrian Reynolds

All my life seems to be a subscription.

There have always been subs, of course. This newspaper for one. (What do you mean, you don’t have a subscription? It’s brilliant value!) And I really don’t mind paying regularly for things that I receive regularly. But lately things have been getting out of hand.

Adrian Reynolds

As I write, much of the news is dominated by Trump and Ukraine. Of course it is. But just behind these another story rumbles on. It’s about the enhanced CVs of some our politicians.

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has come unstuck in a number of ways. The latest of these is her entry in Who’s Who where she says she contributed to a prestigious economic journal. It turns out that she did indeed contribute to an economic journal: just not that one, but one with a similar sounding title. Sinister? Or simple error?

Adrian Reynolds

The news is bad. Nearly always, our news sources contain grim stories, depressing trajectories and disheartening testimonies.

Christian news is sometimes little better. I’m glad for a newspaper, en, that strikes a balance between a realistic view of a sin-infested world and an optimistic view of Spirit-infected people. But it would be easy to see the former and not the latter.

Adrian Reynolds

I don’t mean, where it is or what kind of building and programmes you have. Or even why you exist (something perhaps you capture in a mission statement). All these reflect the individual context of each gathered congregation.

What’s your church like? I mean who makes up the congregation. Each of us might answer that question differently, and there will be large variations, but for the most part our churches are – to a greater or lesser extent – intergenerational.

Adrian Reynolds

There are more people training for ministry in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) than at any time in the last 30 years. Surprised? So were we, when we did the maths.

And the numbers we crunched need a few caveats: We don’t have absolutely concrete data going back 30 years, so we had to do some asking around. And because we’re independent churches we don’t keep tabs on everyone training for Christian work, so we had to do a little estimation.

Adrian Reynolds

How do you consume your entertainment?

Perhaps you are a box-set junkie, ripping through the new releases as fast as they are made available?

Adrian Reynolds

Who are those sermons for? You know, the ones that someone (possibly you) dutifully posts to your church website each week.

We’ve just refreshed our church website and as part of that process I determined to sit down and think why we were actually posting our sermons online.

Adrian Reynolds

The road across the county of Rutland from Stamford to Leicester via Oakham and Melton Mowbray is one Mrs R and I know well.

She went to university in Cambridge and I attended Loughborough, so we were often travelling back and forth along it. The road winds past Rutland Water and through some pretty Leicestershire villages made from honey-coloured stone – including the village of Whitwell.

Adrian Reynolds

I don’t mean to be rude, and I certainly don’t mean to pry. I’m not your pastor and I’m certainly not accountable for you.

But I do know that the Scriptures teach that the mark of a Spirit-filled believer is someone who is killing off sin. ‘For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live’ (Rom. 8:13).

Adrian Reynolds

Resolutions! Don’t you just hate them? And what should grace-filled, Spirit-led Christians have to do with them anyway?

So, let’s jump on the bandwagon and denounce any New Year resolution-making as futile, worthless and profoundly anti-Christian.

Adrian Reynolds

I recently conducted a brief and very unscientific poll on Twitter about church prayer meetings. It’s not going to pass any test for being representative or statis-tically reliable, but nonetheless the anec-dotal results tell a clear story. I asked how many church members attended the weekly church prayer meeting.

34% of respondents said that less than 25% of their church members came. The next two categories (25-50% and 51%+) scored 27% and 13% respectively. The last category ‘we don’t have a weekly prayer meeting’ scored 26%.

Adrian Reynolds

I’ve just moved into a new office and I’m really excited. You may think that demonstrates a certain kind of sadness. However, the truth is I spend a lot of time at my desk and for the last 2½ years my office has been split across two locations – one building housing many of my colleagues and my books, the other my desk.

The distance between the two was not huge – a short walk across a car park. But it was enough that I didn’t spend nearly enough time with others, nor reading or using the books I’m privileged to own.

Adrian Reynolds

On a recent holiday visit to the Scottish Museum of Modern Art, I was struck by the entrance hall artwork which was made up of a long list of names: everybody the artist, 53-year-old Douglas Gordon, could ever remember meeting in his life. You can see it in my holiday snap (right)!

Now this kind of art may not be your cup of tea – you may prefer the more realistic brush strokes of Canaletto or the landscapes of Constable. But I like art that makes me think – and this installation certainly got me thinking, and not only about the GDPR consequences of such a display.

Adrian Reynolds

Family is important. Everyone knows it’s true. Don’t they?

We live in a world of family breakdown. Of our seven immediate neighbours where we live, all are broken homes in the process of rebuilding their lives: second marriages or relationships; single mums; late-in-life divorcees. It’s tragic, and in this context, Christians rightly talk a lot about family; we teach about it; we celebrate it.

Adrian Reynolds

Funerals of those who are not believers are, of course, the saddest events of all. They represent – however good a life the person has lived – a rejection of the saving power of Jesus (though we can never really know) and the prospect of an eternal punishment that every one of us deserves.

Few, if any, unbelievers would acknowledge such a destination, but the reality of death itself should be enough to make such occasions as sober as they could be. It is not altogether surprising that those without hope find ways to avoid such grief. So, out with ‘funerals’ and in with ‘celebration of life’.

Adrian Reynolds

Words have power. Have you noticed?

Of course you have. Because someone once said something to you that had a profound effect on you. You were hurting, feeling lonely, bruised – and someone spoke one of those ‘words in season’ that healed. Or, maybe, you were in a season of sin: proud, arrogant, unrepentant – and someone spoke a timely word that came with the power of conviction and caused you to turn back to God.

Adrian Reynolds

New homes are being built near us, as in many places up and down the country. I can see them from our bedroom window.

I can only dream of living in one of these places – they’re completely out of my price bracket, but still, I couldn’t help but have a nose around the show home. I got ready for this exciting excursion by looking up the details online. After all, if you can’t afford something, it’s reassuring to know how much you can’t afford it.

Adrian Reynolds

I’m now officially an ex-Chartered Accountant. Perhaps your view of bean counters (boring, excited by spreadsheets, etc.) is not that high, in which case my new status hardly warrants much attention or pity.

But the truth is I feel like something has gone. I worked hard for my qualification, and paid for it too. Up until recently, I benefited from a low-income subscription which made sense of keeping the connection, but this year I crossed the threshold and they sent me a bill for hundreds of pounds.