I’ve been promoted.  Have I mentioned this already?  Sorry if I have, but I’m now an official co-host of the fabulous international podcasting sensation that is the Something Beautiful Podcast along with Jonathan and Thomas.

Some of the students on the Youth Work and Applied Theology course at ICC feature on this week’s Something Beautiful Podcast (episode 2.3). Laura, Jay and Justin talk about their work in Youth Ministry and how they make sense of their faith in their work with young people.

If you stick with it to the bitter end and make it through me babbling you get a wee treat.  My youngest son Jack makes his second appearance in podcasting land doing the drop-in at the end.  He was struggling with ‘emergent’, but then who isn’t!

You might also have noticed I’ve added a Something Beautiful widget in the sidebar for your listening convenience.

I was leading worship at St Andrew’s in Blantyre this morning while their minister Peter is off at a conference.  It was great to be there again, although we had a bit of a hymn tune issue which I thought was kinda funny.  It always amuses me when people don’t know a tune how quiet they get, usually with a kind of stunned ‘Help! That’s not the tune we know!’ look on their faces.  The audio of the sermon is above.  Our text for today was Mark 1: 1-11, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

St Andrew's Blantyre

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!!!