In mid February I noticed a flood of tweets with the hashtag #bellletstalk inviting an honest conversation about mental health. My first thought, knowing that Rob Bell had a new book coming out, was excitement and relief that he had taken the brave step of writing something substantial on mental health issues and depression in the ministry. Read more about Let's talk

Yesterday, on the door of a local restaurant, I saw a sign very much like the bottom one of these two: (I didn’t get a picture of the one I saw, but the wording was more or less the same.)

How would you translate it? You may not know Japanese, so I’ll give you the choice of two options: Read more about Literal translations

Because I’ve just wasted a couple of hours on this and I don’t want you to:

If you have a xulrunner application, and you set it up with the directory structure described here, and it doesn’t start, and then you try running it from the command line and it says either:

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file...

or Read more about Running XULrunner apps on OS X

Today I was preaching on the mission of God and salvation history, and decided at the last minute to throw in a good example of (a) how God always seeks to restore relationship with those estranged from him, and (b) the principle that, because God does this, we should too. It’s one of my key themes, and a great verse which highlights it is 2 Samuel 14:14. David has become estranged from his son, and Joab sent a woman in to change his mind and gain forgiveness. The climax of the woman’s argument, in every English translation I have checked, goes like this: Read more about Today in Bible translation horrors

So this morning in church we looked at 1 Corinthians 16, and, in what I think is probably a first when teaching on stewardship, everyone there decided to increase their giving. How did I do it? Read more about With regard to the collection for the saints

The various modes of worship which prevailed… were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.

So this week I have had to deal with Christian publishers who: Read more about More reasons why Wide Margin exists

I was all set to write about how I wasn’t giving up Facebook and other social media for Lent. The Internet, I was going to write, is undeniably positive thing, which has led to the democratisation of information and spread of knowledge possibly to the same degree as the printing press. We don’t give up books for Lent, right? Social media has facilitated connections and conversations between friends new and old. It allows those far away from their home country (like me) to maintain friendships and keep connected. We don’t give up friends for Lent, right? Read more about A social fast

So, an acquaintance shared this on Facebook and there was much approbation: Read more about The incuriosity of metanarrative

Prouser, Ora Horn, Esau’s Blessing: How the Bible embraces those with Special Needs, Teaneck, NJ: Ben Yehuda Press, 2012. Read more about Book review: Esau's Blessing