Parish

Is Mark Rylands the humblest bishop in the Church of England?

The Rt Rev'd Mark Rylands is presently Bishop of Shrewsbury. He is well-known to readers of this blog for being a thoughtful and intelligent advocate for UK secession from the European Union – the Church of England's only Brexit Bishop,…

The Church of England's investment in social media is a major embarrassment

December 7, 2015
26 Comments

Quite often when I attend a variety of events and conferences, I’ll end up in conversation with total strangers from all sorts of backgrounds talking about this blog. It’s…

The Church of England is not dying – it is regenerating

October 16, 2015
0 Comments

It’s been well publicised this week that there are one or two Church of England congregations that aren’t exactly bursting at the seams. If you go to a Church…

Chartres' Lambeth Lecture: the Church must be "vision-led and not problem-led"

October 5, 2015
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While the Archbishop of Canterbury pored over the Blogosphere on his iPad (to which he is apparently rather attached), the Bishop of London psyched himself up for the latest…

Compassionate Conservatism and Social Justice – bedfellows or bugbears?

September 15, 2015
61 Comments

Talk to most Labour supporters about 'compassionate conservatism', and they'll scoff at the very notion, as though the evil Tories had stolen the robe of Christ and were masquerading…

The last chance to save our rural churches

February 12, 2015
262 Comments

There was a popular modern worship song that did the rounds a few years ago entitled 'God of this City'. The chorus went: For greater things have yet to…

Discerning the future of the Church is not an intellectual exercise

October 12, 2014
101 Comments

When I was at university studying Architecture, we were given the hypothetical brief of designing a new chapel for the campus. Having looked forward to it initially, it actually became…