I love Twitter. I love the interaction, the openness and the flatness of it all. But it does have its downsides. And Christian leaders on Twitter, my goodness, drive me up the wall.

There are a number of factors at play. Partly there’s an echo chamber effect where people retweet and pass on things uncritically around a circle of friends, hardly interacting with those who have a different opinion. And 140 characters isn’t much space to develop an intelligent thought. But for Christians there’s an added danger: they’re trying to be inspiring. And everything else, like truth, be damned, in this hunt for twee repeatability. Read more about Tweeting and tweeness

As per usual: This is a blog post, in rant format, rather than an academic paper. Seems unnecessary I know, but sometimes that just needs pointing that out.

I’m doing a lot of study on Restorationism, apostolic movements, and the like, and occasionally coming across cessationist views. Cessationism is a rather hilarious theology which states that, essentially, when Jesus said he’d give us another Comforter who would be with us forever, he was actually taking about a book. The idea is that he gave the Holy Spirit to the church for a bit, and we used to have supernatural power and resources for an unspecified (but obviously very short) duration, and then God decided that was a bad idea. But that’s OK, because we’ve got a book! Read more about Cessationism: Why does anyone go out to bat for this madness?

John Stott’s classic book “Why Charismatics Are Wrong” has now been published in a number of different volumes and under many different titles. This reprint, under the title “Calling Christian Leaders,” goes on to describe why Charismatics are wrong about leadership, authority and, as usual, the nature of the Holy Spirit. Read more about Probably can't submit this as an academic book review

I’m moving certain posts to be friends-only, so you’ll now need to create a user account to read some of the content on this blog. (That’s if I know you and approve you, of course.)

For the rest of you, you’ll never know what sort of horrible things I’m saying about you. (That was humour, by the way.) Read more about Poor impulse control

I take a dim view of IT consultants, particularly having been one, and I am not the only one. Barely a week goes by without a story in the press about yet another government IT scheme failing to meet budget or timelines due to the incompetence of these charlatans; the only surprising thing is that people continue to fall for this when, if you think about it, it should be perfectly obvious that consultants' work is in nobody's interests but their own:

OK, I've just finished one of my three sermons for this Christmas - it's called, and I kid you not, "It's A Very Liberationist Christmas, Charlie Brown" - and so I'm settling in for a good rant. This one's for all of you, evangelicals and liberals alike.

If you've got a friend who's a plumber, is it reasonable to say "Can you just come around and have a look at my sink sometime?" Or maybe you have a friend who's a laywer. Would you say "Can you just defend this case for me when you have a spare moment?" Would you ask a painter friend "Do you think you could pop around and paint the outside of my house for me? I'll make you a cup of tea."

There is a hierarchy of sexiness for mission work. There shouldn't be, but there is, and it goes like this:

There are some things I like about this country, and some things I don't like.

I've got a load of things to write about tonight, but I'll get this one out of the way because it's quick and snarky.