It's the time of year for Christmas carol services.
On Sunday night, at ours, we sang Wesley's final verse of "Hark! The herald-angels sing". It's an absolute cracker, rich in biblical theology, that praises Christ for his work in a full way, and prays that he would accomplish his work in us and in the world.
I love the idea that we can buy produce here that makes a real difference to the people who make it.
The two churches of Kemsing and Woodlands in Kent are going on an ambitious journey together in 2014. We're going on a Bible tour.
Here's the plan: Read the whole Bible through 2014, in step with one another. In that sense, it's a communal read-through. (We're not actually going to come together each day to read, at least not in any way that's organised for the whole church).
Phew, the heading of this post was a mouthful!
This post is a technical one, that probably won't interest many of my regular readers. However I know there are plenty of people looking for how to do this, so I thought I'd post this in case it helps others later.
mod_security is a free or charge module for the Apache webserver. It allows HTTP requests to be analyzed, using a large number of characteristics. You'd be looking for evidence that someone's request to GET or POST is malicious, and you'd block them if so.
Once every 2-4 months, we have an informal evening service in Kemsing under the name of "Digging Deeper". We sing a few songs, and say a few prayers, but most of our time is devoted to taking some topic addressed by the Bible and digging deeper together in what the Bible says. We've thought about the Trinity before, and we've thought about the inspiration of Scripture. Last night, we considered our hope as Christians - where is history heading, what is our part in it, and how certain can we be?
On a Monday morning I'm always exhausted. Sundays take it out of me.
That means I often use the lion's share of Mondays to get admin done, or other things that take time but don't require the most intensive thought.
But over the years I've learnt the value of starting my preaching preparation early in the week.
(Before going further, I know: Sermon series preparation can usefully be done 6-9 months ahead, and you shouldn't first think about the passages you preach in the week before you preach them. Take that as read).
Earlier this week, I got several automated e-mails from Drupal sites I manage. The e-mails told me that some of the modules I use had a new version, so I was advised to log in and upgrade.
I was puzzled to see that one of the modules I maintain was in the list of pending upgrades. That was puzzling because I hadn't pushed any changes to that module for a little while, so I wasn't expecting any new releases.
This coming weekend, I'll be at Otford Manor, the base of Oak Hall Expeditions, for a teaching weekend. Roughly 4 times a year, they run weekends under the title of "Unlocking the Bible", at which a speaker takes one book of the Bible, and seeks to unpack and apply its main message for today.
This week, I've been pondering how the individual paragraphs of Matthew 7 fit into the whole chapter. It's always a mistake to take a paragraph of Scripture away from its context, and to read it with no regard to where it comes. In this case, these paragraphs were spoken by Jesus, but he said them as part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.
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