The science is clear. We are living in a warming world due to fossil fuel emissions. The world’s most vulnerable are already suffering...

Life hurts — personally and collectively — and Scripture does not turn away from that reality. The Psalms of Lament offer a rich resource for prayer and life in a hurting world. Join Rev’d Jon Swales MBE for an online teaching exploring the Psalms of Lament, drawing on Scripture, theology, poetry, and lived experience. The session aims to be engaging, thoughtful, and challenging, connecting academic insight with practical reflection. Who it’s for:  anyone wanting to engage mo

Christian leaders are complex human beings. That shouldn’t need saying. But sometimes it does. We are shaped over time — by desire, fear, love, disappointment, trauma, hope. We change. We are never static. Christian theology speaks of a 'calling' towards Christlikeness, often named as cruciformity. But calling is not direction, and vocation is not arrival. Leaders, like the communities they serve, are a mixed bag. Some are being softened. Some are being hardened. Formation in

I. ENCOUNTER They tell him on the away day that eighty per cent are non-religious. Tick boxes. Yes or no. Faith reduced to data. As if the soul only aches when belief is declared. As if grief checks credentials before it speaks. He is a priest—though here he walks the corridors as chaplain, pastoral care. Same calling, softer tongue. The badge says St Julian’s Hospital— a cross in the logo, a chapel in the basement, psalms etched in stone, evidence of an age when mission and

Church leaders are storytellers by vocation. They retell the story of Jesus — not as a static account, but as a living narrative people are invited to inhabit. But they also tell other stories alongside this one: stories about the church itself — where it has come from, where it is going, and why it matters. These stories circulate everywhere: sermons, leadership meetings, PCCs, reports, funding conversations, informal networks. Over time, they create a shared reality. And th

The care home smells of polish and overcooked vegetables. Photographs line the walls— faces once fierce, now softened by forgetting. A woman says hello. Neither of us knows her name, but the God of the covenant does not forget— her name penned in the Book of Life. Later— the detention centre. Fluorescent light. Locked doors. Lives paused between borders. Someone asks how long this will last. No one knows. Names become numbers, processed into stats that serve political interes

I walk the path through the woods because I cannot stay still. Mud darkens the cuffs of my trousers, my hands are cold in my pockets, the ground yielding beneath each step. My eyes sting— tears arriving without warning, without a name. I stop. Try to pray. Nothing comes. No words. Only breath. In and out— cold air filling my lungs, fogging briefly before it disappears. And into the quiet I whisper the next line of the Creed: I believe in the Holy Spirit. The words feel thin t

We live on the scraps of Eden. Life — a tragic miracle, an echo of a deeper symphony. The fruit is rationed. Water tastes like metal. Joy comes thin — a brittle leaf in winter wind. The trees are silent. The ground yields only to sweat. Behind us, the flaming sword still burns. There is no way back. Time does not reverse. So we go on — with spit, sweat, blood, semen, and shit. East of Eden, we make children. We make war. We make myths to cradle our ache. We bruise. We hunger.

Kev turns up on Minster Mondays Leeds Minster, cold already by mid-afternoon. We gather from two till four. Games at tables, dice clatter, jokes land, custard creams and aldi knock off penguins. For a moment his hands remember play, how not to brace. Then we gather for worship. The light thins fast this time of year. We light candles and move through the Minster, past life-sized shepherds, Mary mid-breath, Joseph unsure where to stand. Between them, we make space for ourselve

Let the bells ring out for Christmas. Not to cover the silence, but to name it. Not to distract us from the dark, but to announce the light that has entered it. Let them ring for the mystery we return to again— God with us. Not above us, not beyond us, but here. The Word becomes flesh. Not an idea, not a symbol, but a person. Fragile. Dependent. Fully divine, fully human. The Creator steps into the creation, not as a king, but as a child. Not to watch, but to walk with us. To

He Will Return (Advent) He will not return to Eden. Not to clean mornings. Not to soil that never learned blood. The sword still burns. Time does not reverse. What was broken stays broken until it is healed. He will not return to innocence. There is no undoing of the long violence. No erasing of bodies used, lands stripped. He comes instead to flesh that remembers. To earth stamped flat by boots, by markets, by graves. He does not come to make things as they were. He comes th

Inde ventūrus est iūdicāre vivos et mortuos (From there he will come to judge the living and the dead) It is well past midnight. The house sleeps; I do not. The story I heard earlier still clings to me— a quiet cruelty carried out by cruel hands. I don’t repeat the details, but they sit heavy in the room, like a shadow that refuses to lift. I make tea I do not want, pace the kitchen floor, open the window to cold air— but nothing settles. The night feels bruised. I sit in the

He leaves the mission hall at Byker at 6pm. Tough one tonight. Found out Jamie had died. Only six months ago he was baptised, got clean, got saved, relapsed— tragic. Geordie wind slicing sideways— sharp as truth. He tells himself he’ll be home soon: Metro, short walk, ready meal, half a bottle of red, Netflix, bed. A simple plan. Aye, well. Newcastle has other ideas. He is knackered— happens every year— still weeks to go. He used to love Advent— moody hope, no hopium, no Disn

Across the UK, 14 million people struggle to make ends meet. In Hull, almost half of all children grow up in poverty. East of Eden: Advent in Hull He stands at the front of the church, East of Eden, paint peeling in tired curls, damp spreading like a wound no one can afford to fix. The brass eagle under dust looks out over the flock. The churchwarden nods— baptised here, married here, and one day carried out through that same door. Humber wind barges in, raw with iron, salt,

Dawn does not rush. It comes softly, as if the world itself is afraid to breathe. I reach the next line: On the third day he rose again. And the silence bends toward light. The darkest day is not the final day. The tomb is not the end of the story, but its turning point. What we call dead, God calls seed. What we bury in despair, Love raises in mystery. He rose— not to erase death, but to unmake it. Not to deny the wounds, but to show that they can shine. The cross still stan

Night deepens. The candle burns low. I reach the next line of the Creed: He descended into hell And I pause. The words fall like a stone into silence. Yesterday he suffered. Today he sleeps. The world holds its breath. God has gone quiet. It is Holy Saturday. The space between agony and dawn, between “It is finished” and “He is risen.” Faith itself feels buried. If incarnation was God with us, and crucifixion was God for us, then this— this descent— is God beneath us. Love go

Passus sub Pontio Pilato, Crucifixus, Mortuus, et Sepultus (Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried) It is evening, and the shadows arrive. The chapel grows dim. I reach the next line: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. The words weigh heavy, thick with empire and execution. A governor’s name fixed forever in our creed. A reminder that the gospel bleeds within history. Pontius Pilate signs the order. Religion and emp

Qui Conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, Natus ex Maria Virgine (Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary) The afternoon arrives, The air tastes of rain. I reach the next line: Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. The infinite breathes into the finite. Spirit hovers again— as in the beginning, but now over a young woman’s yes. No temple, no throne, only the quiet chamber of a womb. Theotokos, God-bearer, her consent becomes creation’s hinge. Divinit

Rain taps against the window. A kettle hums. Somewhere the news mutters of conflict, climate and cost. I reach the next line: And in Jesus Christ. The room grows still. Not an idea now, but a man. A man with calloused hands and kind eyes. A man who knew splinters, hunger, laughter. Yeshua of Nazareth, his very name meaning the Lord saves. He comes not as Joshua with a sword, but as Yeshua with open palms. Not leading armies, but walking with fishermen. Not commanding from abo