Living Letters of the Word

In some probably unlikely news, I recently had a contribution published in a book of Christian readings and meditations. From Wild Goose Publications, the publishing arm of the Iona Community, Living Letters of the Word is a four-month collection of daily readings that reflect on various aspects of Christian life. My contribution is a short…

Mystery Worshipper hits St Silas

Ship of Fools is a satirical Christian website which I don’t read nearly often enough. It’s very good – both funny and thought-provoking – and one of its highlights is the “mystery worshipper” section, where churches are reviewed by unidentified visitors. My old church in Glasgow, St Silas, was recently visited by the mystery worshipper,…

Toilet evangelism

I’d like to share an interesting observation from church yesterday. No, it wasn’t the morning sermon on welcome, which David kicked off by telling the story of when my church search came to St Silas. I wasn’t actually there as I was in Edinburgh over Saturday night seeing friends. It’s probably good that I wasn’t…

Jumping off cliffs

I was away this past weekend at the Abernethy Trust outdoor centre in Nethy Bridge, helping out at a youth trip away with my old church in Inverness. The weekend was an exhausting but fun-packed time of various outdoor activities such as rock climbing, archery, canoeing, zipslides, assault courses, silly games, and not much sleep.…

Which church?

Although my church search is very much finished, I still get the occasional email about it – usually from folk interested in Glasgow’s churches, or who say they’ll pass my web address on to anyone they know of who is looking for a church in the city. I had a very nice email in that…

Oh, you’re that Simon?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve really enjoyed becoming more of a part of St Silas. I’ve been to more services, met loads more people, made good friends, joined a homegroup, and found out lots more about the church as a whole – where it comes from, what it’s doing now for its members and…

Murder

One really interesting feature of WordPress, which hosts my blog, is that it shows you what words or phrases people use if they arrive at your page through a search engine. For example, many people arrive at my site because they googled (or maybe yahooed or whatever, but you get my point) for things like…

Frenzy: A Review

Only kidding. No way am I going around reviewing Christian music festivals… I'd never be able to show my face in a church ever again. Infamy in a dozen Glasgow churches is enough for me, thanks. Frenzy was good – although mostly it was just a great chance to meet people. The four of us…

Coping with alcohol

After weekends away in Aberdeen and Inverness, it was good to be able to stay in Glasgow and get to St Silas, my probable new church. I guess I should say that this draws to an end my church search – which has been a fascinating exercise. I’m delighted to be settling where I am,…

St Silas: Back in The Lion’s Den

Round 2 took me back to St Silas today, for their morning and evening services. Just like my first visit, both services were brilliant. The rector, David McCarthy, preached in the morning on 1 Peter, and another member of the church in the evening on Mark chapter 7 about doing to others as you’d have…

Death in the morning, incest at night

I returned to Sandyford Henderson today for the morning and evening services, and this blog’s title was how a guy I got talking to this evening summed up the sermons. Cheery stuff, but then it was deep Old Testament texts, and those guys really went in for their murder, warfare and sexual deviancy. Which I…

Destiny: midweek

I went to Destiny’s Wednesday night meeting for students and young professionals, along with John, my new friend that I’d bumped into on Sunday. It was an interesting experience – it was a bible study, prayer meeting, mutual support time, discussion group, communion, and lots else all rolled into one and stuffed up in the…

It is your Destiny, Luke…

Round 2 kicked off yesterday with a return to Destiny. I’d enjoyed it the first time, although many aspects had been a little alien to me as a non-charismatic, and my flatmate and I had not received too much of a welcome. This time around, though, I made it to both Sunday services and loved…

Round 2: the battle plan

I’ve been a little unsure as to how to take the search forward. I can’t really pick a favourite just now (though the early front-runners are QPBC, Re:Hope and Sandyford Henderson), and I don’t really want to spend a few weeks in each because that will take ages. I’d thought about just keeping going round…

End of round 1

Sunday’s foray into the world of Baptistry brings to an end the first round of church visits and it’s time for a quick recap and some initial conclusions. Those churches which survived the cut are (with links to the reviews): Destiny, Sandyford Henderson, St Silas, C7, Partick Trinity, Re:Hope, and Queen’s Park Baptists. Those which…

Queen’s Park Baptist Church reviewed

Baptists. What exactly are they for? This was the question I pondered while my flatmate and I took the train over to Queen’s Park for this morning’s service. I’ve not been to many Baptist churches, and so don’t really know what defines them as a denomination, other than having health hazards for fonts. QPBC is…

Thursday 6 April 2006

There’s been a couple of interesting developments on the church search front. I received an email today from a member of Partick Trinity, taking a soupçon of umbrage at the review I wrote about it on March 26. I was given this helpful advice: “I’m sorry that you did not find the pews comfortable; they…

Wednesday 5 April 2006

I got a nice email today from a guy called Ian Andsell, who runs the Scottish Christian website. He found this site after visiting the blog of Brian Ingraham, pastor at Re:Hope, who seems to have stumbled across my re:view of Re:Hope and blogged about it himself. Ian says he has added my site to…

Wednesday 29 March 2006

Finally, Re:Hope re:viewed. And I promise to stop doing the re: thing as soon as I think the joke wears thin. Which might not be for a while, I’m afraid. So yes, this was Sunday night’s church, whose website content I had a rant about earlier this month. It struck me as a fresh, new,…