Neil Rees's Blog: eatingwithsinners, page 8

WDJW

One of these days I am going to get myself a bracelet made with WDJW on. And before you ask, no, I haven’t spelled that wrong – if I wanted a “What Would Jesus Do”bracelet, I could just go and buy one. I wonder if anyone would notice the difference? And if they did, what [...]

The Pentecost Plot

Today is the day of Pentecost, the date in the Christian calendar that celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on that first group of disciples who met together in prayer in the upper room. Pentecost speaks about the “birth” of the church and the stage-entrance of the third person of the Trinity into the [...]

Blessed are the poor…

The day before yesterday I found out that my children live below the poverty line. And their parents too for that matter, but the news report focused on children. Let me qualify that before anyone gets too worried. They actually meant “relative poverty”, not “extreme poverty”, even though that’s not what was said. Simple “poverty” [...]

Beat until stiff and stand in the fridge

Words do not carry immutable meaning as defined by an entry in a dictionary. Certainly, they bring core meaning with them, but words are moulded both by the words that accompany them and the stage on which they are placed. The whole is irremediably more than the sum of its parts. This is true of [...]

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”

Back to 1 Timothy. Or maybe not just yet. Some further understanding of the communications process as a whole may help us to assimilate the sheer impossibility of a “literal” interpretation, whilst pointing us in the right direction to begin to grasp what the text may actually mean. Might help with the rest of the [...]

“The audience are literally electrified and glued to their seats”

Having just watched A.N. Jacobs’ TED talk on “The Year of Living Biblically”, in which he tried to live out – literally – every one of the Bible’s commands, I thought it a good moment to fire off a couple of thoughts on biblical interpretation. You see, a couple of Sundays ago we hit 1 [...]

On Ilkley Moor bar t’hat…

Yesterday morning Lynn and I participated in the first Carrera del Donante (“Donors’ Race”) in Zafra. Organized by the local organizations of blood and organ donors together, it aimed to raise their profile and convince people to sign up. (Lynn came third in her category, way to go! I ran with her – all I [...]

“You can observe a lot by just watching” (Yogi Berra)

Last week I was back in Llanelli, South Wales, but this time only via a webcam from home in Spain, teaching a short course on “Tools for Anthropological Research” to the fantastic trainees on the World Horizons Equipping for Service programme. Another reason for a gap in blogs… (What a bunch of willing guinea pigs… [...]

Unless the Lord builds the house…

Over Easter, we had the privilege of receiving a team of eight from our home church, Cottage Lane Mission – thanks guys :-), fantastic job! – to help us do some work on our house. Hence the gap in blogs – just too busy between paint and cement to put virtual pen to paper, I’m afraid. Our house [...]

The Word became flesh… and spoke Aramaic

"The Word became flesh", wrote the apostle John, to which Scottish missiologist Andrew Walls added, "and spoke Aramaic, probably with a Galilean accent". Profound insights lie in this simple comment. I have just finished two weeks teaching a introductory course on linguistics and language learning skills, part of the World Horizons Equipping for Service programme. [...]