Michael J. Leyden

I spent a few minutes after morning prayer on Saturday wandering around the church building, enjoying the silence. I also had a look at the stained glass windows - most of which are Victorian. It's something I don't get to do very often because I'm too busy. My favourite window in our church building is very recent, only three years old, and is a brightly coloured rendition of Jesus welcoming children to himself. It is in the baptistry, an appropriate place for welcoming children into the family of God. I discovered another window today too, which I've never really noticed before - something that surprised me because ours is not an overly large building. It is a large plain window, with clear glass. You can see straight through it to the outside world: across the grave yard to the A-road that runs through the middle of the parish, and on to the homes beyond. I stood for a while watching people heading to the shops, the saturday morning traffic held up by the changing...

"This book is about American Evangelicals. More precisely, it explores how some Evangelicals are consuming and enacting knowledge produced as part of the Emergining Church movement. Even more precisely, it is an ethnographic analysis of identities fashioned, practices performed, discourses articulated, histories claimed, institutions created, and ideas interrogated in this cultural field. Emerging Evangelicalism, we will come to see, is a movement organized by cultural critique, a desire for change, and grounded in the conditions of both modernity and late modernity." (p. 5) It only seemed fair to let James Bielo outline his own argument rather than me do it for him, so there you go. I'm reading this book to review it for Anvil Journal (UK) and started off thinking that a) this would be another typical ethnographic study that does not attend to any theology, and 2) that it would concern itself primarily with USA and have little or nothing to say to me in a British co...

I have been thinking a bit about ordained ministry this week, and the shift of emphasis to leadership - "Church Leaders" - that has happened in recent years. It is a very strong notion in Liverpool Diocese, I suspect because of its evangelical heritage (where the concept seems to be very strong). It is a theme that I have come back to many times in the last ten years or so. I have so far avoided blogging on this topic because I have struggled to articulate my thoughts coherently. I'm not now claiming to have gotten to that point, but I feel able to get a few things down and perhaps get some feedback that will help me think more clearly about the area of leadership and priesthood. (When I say priesthood here I really mean ordained ministry - for those of you not from a traditon that calls its presbyters priests.) It is something that genuinely bothers me - not in the sense that I am profoundly disturbed by others' opinions, but because I haven't landed my own th...

I really hope this doesn't lose me my job, but I thought it was too funny not to share. Enjoy!

Earlier this week I was at Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a meeting of young priest-theologians . I was very excited to be invited along - not least because I'm not yet ordained to the Priesthood and I haven't finished my PhD so calling myself a priest-theologian seems premature. Nonetheless, it was a good day for me. I have long struggled to hold together the two the aspects of my sense of vocation: that of a parish priest, and that of an academic theologian. So, to be invited along to a meeting addressing exactly that issue, and finding like-minded people with a similar vocation, was a real treat. Several times during my training, and even a little since moving into full-time ordained ministry, I have come across a negative attitude towards academia from other ordained colleagues. Many pose the question of the practicality of systematic theology or biblical studies for example, or the "relevance" of this for a congregation. I ha...

It has been a long time since I blogged anything here - but I have had a very busy few months. I was ordained to the Dioconate on 3rd July and have moved the whole family a hundred miles north to serve in Liverpool Diocese for the next three to four years. Thus reading and thinking has been somewhat replaced by removal vans and boxes, clerical robes and school assemblies -- all of which I love! As a new pattern starts to emerge for us here I have found time to begin reading and thinking again. Today is my official research day, so I shall be working on my PhD, but I've just enough time to blog a few thoughts about a book I've just started reading hot off the presses. It is Rod Garner's On Being Saved: The Roots of Redemption (DLT, 2011). I was there at the book launch last week and picked up a copy. The book is short and pithy, in places quite poetic, and makes an interesting argument (though I hasten to add not a new one and certainly not with the depth of scholarship one...

Ian Paul at Psephizo has posted a copy of Bishop Tom's reflections on the recent events surrounding bin Laden's death here . In a short but thought provoking piece, Bishop Tom asks some important questions about the way we think about justice and the relationship between the gospel and the political manifestation of justice we have witnessed this week. The discussion following, in which I have ventured a few reflections about Reinhold Niebhur's influence on all this, is also quite good. Go and take a look if you have minute or two...

The video I mentioned in my last post: my interview with Professor Tom Greggs on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (once again with my questions cut out!). This is a YouTube clip from a much bigger project being undertaken by Rev. Dr Tim Hull at St John's College Nottingham UK. Click here for more info.