What is in Kelvin's Head?

Blog

  • The sun comes up it’s a new day dawning

    At about 4.30 this morning I found myself awake, wide awake in my hotel room in Edinburgh. The sun was streaming into the room despite the curtains trying to block it out. And my first thought was words that we sang at morning prayer yesterday in the General Synod meeting. The sun comes up, it’s…

  • General Synod: Come for all now is ready

    I’ve commented before that you can tell almost all you need to know about a Christian community by the way that they invite people to communion. Yesterday, General Synod started to meet in Edinburgh and by some distance the most significant theological statement came, not in the debates about how we will talk about same-sex…

  • Sermon preached on 7 June 2015

    St Mary’s is a special place for all kinds of reasons. This place is a joy and a wonder and it is a place where I really enjoy preaching. I almost never come away from a Sunday or a feast day without feeling moved, inspired and thankful for the worship that we manage offer here…

  • Dear Deans – a Scottish Response

    Within the last week, a rather provocative blog post emerged about the experience of going to cathedrals. It was particularly focussed, I think on the experience of going to a cathedral in England. (You can find it here: Dear Deans – by A Reasonable Enthusiast). Richard Moy, its author writes rather articulately about going to…

  • Corpus Christi

  • A simple question about Civil Partnerships

    Next week at General Synod we have the following motion being presented. Motion 24: That this Synod instruct the Faith and Order Board to instruct the Committee on Canons to prepare canonical material to enable the registration of Civil Partnerships to be undertaken in the Scottish Episcopal Church, so that a first reading of such…

  • 25 More Questions for people who want to make their churches grow

    A lot of people seem to have been sharing my 25 Questions for people who want to make their churches grow on social media. So, here’s 25 more… If you didn’t have to go to your church on Sunday would you still go? Are the clergy happy? Are the musicians happy? Does the congregation have…

  • 25 Questions for people who want to make churches grow

    Do you have a decent church website? Is it up to date? Is it responsive – ie does it work on mobile phones? Does your own online profile feature your ideas and hopes and dreams other than a desire for people to turn up to church? Do you know what you are doing with twitter…

  • End of Life (aka Death)

    I was pleased this week that the vote in the Scottish Parliament to change the law on so-called assisted dying didn’t manage to make any further progress. Parliamentarians have now had a number of chances to think about this and vote on it and it still failed comprehensively to get anywhere near a majority of…

  • Going out and coming in

    This week I’ll have been at St Mary’s for nine years. It is the anniversary of my installation on Sunday. And this year I’ve decided to give myself an anniversary treat. When I came to St Mary’s there was much to try to understand and much to take in. Just trying to get your head…