P.S.

PS is an email and web-based blog format issued regularly by Contemporary Christianity. The format provides an online space for writers toexplore issues relating to church, culture and life in Northern Ireland, seeking to understand the times through insights from Scripture, theology, reason and the observations that flow from lived experience.

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Conflicted Ministry

It is now more than a year and a half since I retired from full time ministry in First Armagh Presbyterian Church.

‘A friend loves at all times?’

Maybe I am just more conscious of it than before, but I sense that there is an increasing amount of pain and distress in people’s lives – both for younger people as well as for those of us who are older. This is causing me to think a lot more deeply about some of the issues around building and maintaining good friendships.

The Story of Christmas and the Everyday Ordinary

The Christmas story is a story set in the context of a census. Luke locates the birth narrative of Jesus in familiar words: ‘In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.’

Treating All With Special Honour

I am right handed. I use my right hand to write, occasionally to play tennis, golf or cricket, but most especially to drink coffee. Until recently, I assumed I only used my left hand to lean on. Then on 1st May, I had a stroke.

We will remember them… We will remember Him

It was just like any other dark, miserable January night for the soldiers on patrol.

We will remember…under the Cross of Christ

I realise that this is an emotional minefield: a very complex subject of great theological, societal and political significance.

Living like Eunuchs: Is it time to rethink singleness?

In a recent article in The Irish Independent the retired Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin remarked that he was never prepared for celibacy or singleness; his comment caught my attention causing me to think about my own experience.

Sovereignty & Love

A number of weeks ago I went to a prayer meeting that began, as almost all such gatherings do, with a time of praise and adoration of God. How we pray spontaneously – the language and the ‘personal liturgy’ that we use – tells us a great deal about who we are, as both individual followers of Jesus, and the collective people of God.