Passing On the Baton Over the course of the past 48 hours, I’ve observed 2 public figures signal their intention to hand over power in quite striking ways. The Bishop of Meath and Kildare, the Most Reverend Pat Storey, announced her retirement some months ago. We trained in theological college around the same time, over […]
Where Everybody Knows Your Name Yesterday morning, I had breakfast in the Hare’s Corner with my mum and my brother. It was my mum’s birthday, and my brother and I were delighted to make it home from Leicester and Belfast respectively on Sunday evening. It’s not often we manage to find ourselves in the same […]
In Trouble and in Joy It has been a sad and difficult week in the life of our church. Within the space of 7 days 3 of our members have died. Although these people had experienced illness in recent months, it doesn’t make it any easier for their families and friends who have been plunged […]
It’s all about to kick off! Football fans around the world are counting the days until the 23rd FIFA World Cup get underway. For the first time ever the tournament is being hosted by 3 nations – Canada, Mexico and the United States. This feast of football, which is held every 4 years, will capture […]
A Good Customer Experience Some months ago Lucy, our daughter, and I went out on an important mission. Mother’s Day was coming up and we wanted to get her mum a special gift to say ‘thank you’ for all that she does for us. We went to our local shopping centre and, as we set […]
A Couple of Significant Reads Sometimes we get the chance in the blog to make some reading recommendations, and I have recently completed two books which I felt were very worthwhile. I’ll say a little bit about them both individually, but if there was a thread which unites them, it’s the thread of authenticity or […]
Sharing Tough Stories There’s a lot of difficult stuff knocking around in the news these days. I know a lot of people who intentionally have tuned out. It seems like a daily avalanche of suffering and struggle and unpredictability. We hear of displaced people in the Middle East, of refugees trying to make dangerous journeys […]
Some Lessons from the Irish Bouldering Championships 2026 Last weekend, BoulderWorld, Belfast, hosted the Irish Bouldering Championships 2026 in partnership with Mountaineering Ireland. It was an amazing event and I took away some lessons which I felt would be of great value to the church. Some of these things are, perhaps, already in place in […]
Getting Caught Up in Beautiful Moments One of the things I love to do on Mondays when I’m off is collect the children from school. I quite often drop them in, but don’t often get the chance to collect them and to hear from them, or their teachers or classroom assistants, how the day has […]
Going for Growth Some years ago, Bishop Ken Clarke, the retired Bishop of Kilmore, wrote a cracking little book called “Going for Growth.” It looked at the idea of coming to faith, learning what it looks like to follow Jesus in our daily life, and then how to pass the faith on to family, friends […]