Story Many call her Santa Muerte (Saint Death) but she has been condemned by the Roman Catholic church. The grim, skeletal female figure has a huge following in Mexico. Faith in Santa Muerte is popular among criminals, drug lords and ne’er-do-wells who sometimes crawl piously to a Santa Muerte shrine. Read more
Is Maradona the best footballer of all time? Worldwide there are 200,000 worshippers of Diego who attend the church of Maradona. The faithful follow their own ‘bespoke’ ten commandments which urge them to ‘love football above everything’ and ‘name your first son Diego’. The Church of Maradona insists that you get Read more
Talking to aggressive atheists can be enjoyable and fulfilling if you have an intelligent and creative spiel. I was talking to an atheist builder who had a pop at me for being a Christian. He declared boldly: “I’m on the side of science and not religion.” I was straight in Read more
Just came back from a great holiday in Crete with Anne. Truth be told, Crete has a lot more sunshine than Leeds and Zeus, the Greek god, was supposedly born on that fair isle! We didn’t bump into the husband of Hera or any other Greek deity but we did Read more
Last night I delivered my presentation on Mafia and the Problem of Evil to about thirty members of the evening fellowship at St Peter’s in Harrogate. At TFN we are committed to giving Christians an opportunity to think through challenging and difficult topics. Almost every day we hear about atrocities Read more
An Indian fakir had been living on a bed of spikes for 18 months. Why was he doing this? The desperate man said this: “I worship God in this way but I confess that the pricks of these spikes are not so bad as the pain I get from my Read more
Very encouraged that my article ‘How Evangelism can be Fun‘ is featured on the front of the Baptist Times. To date 15 people have made comments about my article. So delighted that an old friend, Jeffrey Dudiak, Professor of Philosophy, The King’s University, Edmonton, Canada wrote this: Behind the engaging Read more
Thanks to everyone who prayed for me yesterday. I really need this prayer support. RB is a ministry that is committed to reaching out to British teenagers and during this conference there was some serious bespoke evangelism going on. Please look at previous postings if you don’t understand this way Read more
Bespoke evangelism begins with everyday conversation. This might involve chatting about vegetarian cooking, fish and chips, the royal family, detective dramas, sport, social events, photography, poetry, travel in exotic locations, gangster films and Hollywood stars. We find out what people naturally enjoy talking about and then we build bridges into Read more
In 2003 football hard man and actor Vinnie Jones admitted assaulting an airline passenger and drunkenly claiming he could have a flight crew “murdered for £3,000”. Jones became incandescent with rage when a fellow passenger, Stephen Driscoll told him he was being “annoying”, sparking a tirade of aggressive threats from Read more