It’s almost Christmas.  For many churches that means nativity plays and carol services.  For Dunfermline URC those will come later so this morning presented a bit of a challenge.  How to preach on Christmas… before it’s Christmas.

This is what I came up with.  Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.

Sermon Text (for those who like to read)

When the world was dark
And the city was quiet,
You came.

The Something Beautiful Podcast crew have produced a pretty cool crowd-sourced advent episode.  Listeners and regular contributers were invited to read one of the 9 Christmas Bible passages and send in Christmas wishes.  It’s turned out pretty good!  Avril and I read one and all the family read another.  I think our three boys do a particularly good job of shepherds and angels!  Have a listen at something beautiful.

This week’s sermon almost didn’t happen.  I was really busy and thinking about simply rehashing last week’s offering.  But as I started to rework it I deleted it and started again.  And I’m glad I did.  As usual your comments, reactions and thoughts are most welcome.

This sermon was preached on 14 December, the 3rd Sunday in Advent, at Hamilton United Reformed Church.

This week’s sermon, Waiting.  As usual your thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

The sermon includes some words at the end which are not mine, but Jonny Baker’s from his book Alternative Worship.

I’m becoming a bit of a regular on the Something Beautiful Podcast, maybe because I’ll do pretty much anything for a latte and a cake.  Check out this week’s discussion where Thomas and I have a chat about Advent, hope, expectation, disappointment and recontextualisation (Thomas’ favourite word this week), all with the wonderful noises of Starbucks in the background.

Listen to the latest episode here and let us know what you think.  I’m sure some of what we say is not complete nonsense!!!

Last night I had the privilege of filling in for Thomas, the regular co-host of the Something Beautiful Podcast. Thomas is ill and so asked me if I could step in and chat with Jonathan about his interview with Dave Schmelzer, author of Not The Religious Type.

Jonathan and Dave talk about stages of faith, signs and maths, then Jonathan and I have a chat about some of the issues raised in the interview.

This episode of the Something Beautiful Podcast is now avaialable HERE!  Have a listen and let us know what you think!

The second part of my chat with Thomas about Seth Godin’s new book ‘Tribes’ on the Something Beautiful podcast HERE.

We talk about change, cycles, leadership and faith in a Starbucks… complete with coffeehouse sound effects!

This evening I’m meeting up with Thomas aka Headphonaught for a chat about Tribes (book or audio), the new book by Seth Godin.

Our chat is being recorded as part of the Something Beautiful podcasts so I’ll try to speak clearly and even make sense.  All I’ll say for now is that I liked the audio book and it resonates with lots of the things I’ve written about and spoken about over the past few years so expect lots of soapbox rants!

I’ve been thinking of posting podcasts for a while so have a look in the sidebar for last Sunday’s sermon or listen here and let me know what you think. UPDATE - or get it on iTunes!

Over the next while I’m going to be working with ICC and some of my friends at Church of Scotland on a project to make a CertHE level youth work course available as a distance learning course with almost all of the content online using Moodle.  Why?  Maybe this video has some clues…