• Predictions for 2014

  01/01/2014

  1. Remember those people who used to say, “But what is a blog…?” Well this year you are going to be hearing them say, “But what is a mooc…?”
  2. Gay men are going to start shaving again. Now that so many straight men have bought into the idea that beards are hip, it is time to mess with their fashion sense again. Consider this the memo. (Next year, the end of tattoos!)
  3. Church of Scotland General Assembly will be unable to affirm last year’s compromise on a local option for ministers who happen to be gay.
  4. More revelations relating to Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien.
  5. Number of active bloggers decreases. Influence of those still blogging increases.
  6. The real purpose of the Pilling Report will be revealed with hindsight as evangelicals begin to argue about its contents. (May take a couple of years, but trust me on this one). Initially this will be in private – increasingly in public. Having been the great unifying factor for Evangelicals for the last 10 years, attitudes to gay people will become the source of greatest disunity amongst Evangelicals for the next decade. Unappealing and unsatisfying as it is, Pilling is a watershed – it was never designed to court liberal opinion so we might as well stop moaning about it. It was designed to divide evangelical opinion and is going to be jolly successful.
  7. The Independence Referendum will be lost here in Scotland but alas, not by enough to shut everyone up.
  8. Such terrible statistics in the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway that we lose at least 4 seats on General Synod.
  9. Lord Carey will say that Christians are being persecuted in the UK, that the church is dying out or that the sky is going to fall in, and will say it at the most unhelpful time possible – probably around one of the English General Synods or Easter.
  10. We will hear about our first UK gay divorce.

  Trends to watch

  • Continued meltdown of the Church of Scotland. Ceasing to be a national church before our very eyes.
  • Internet increasingly rewards those who know how to manipulate images.
  • Economic polarization of the UK continues.

  New Year Predictions

Previous Posts

• Ordination Sermon – Perth 28 October 2007

  28/10/2007

  Christine. Just over 10 year’s ago, I sat where you are sitting, waiting to make my own response to the same questions which in a few moment’s time will be put to you. As I think back to that time, I remember an incident which happened to me in my training before I was ordained.…

• Don't forget

  27/10/2007

  Don’t forget that British Summer Time ends tonight. Clocks go back 1 hour. We get an extra hour in bed. I’ve a preaching gig in Perth tomorrow evening at St Ninian’s Cathedral. An ordination, the installation of a dean and three people being made canons. We’ll need that extra hour, I should think. If you…

• Shine on me, shine on me

  26/10/2007

  Now, a wee spiritual exercise for you all – take a song and teach it to pray. Let’s have a go at Take That’s glorious latest one, Shine. Take it and listen to it and imagine that it was written as a dialogue between the soul and God. Your job is to work out who…

• Biobank – an ethical question

  25/10/2007

  I’ve been invited to take part in the UK Biobank. It is project to collect genetic information from a hundreds of thousands of people in order to do research. I’ve found trying to make my mind up whether or not to take part very hard but in the end decided not to do so. Whilst…