Stephen Hackney

It’s Friday, Sunday’s coming!! No matter how dark things seem, hold on, Easter Sunday’s coming and there’s hope because there’s resurrection coming with it!

"I have come to realise that the greatest trap in life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. When we come to believe in the voices that call us worthless, it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us ‘Beloved’." Henri Nouwen

Wisdom @ricklgodwin

Another line in the Guardian: 'Snow might not be swirling in the UK but Covid is in the air this Christmas' Honestly, just sod off - winter always contained risk, and always will. I'm volunteering on the steam train dressed as Santa today. I hope you all have as much fun as us!

"Slow" is the speed of neighborly church, slow enough to notice, slow enough to identify with, slow enough to interrupt our agenda for a neighbor in need. churchanew.org/brueggemann/t…

I can’t recall a season when I have felt the level of pastoral urgency to call people to radically follow Jesus. Both Christians and non-Christians alike. But especially Christians.

The best friends or partners have faced their shadow. They know their "dark" traits so they don't project an idealized perfection onto others. Most relationships end today because people expect a perfect person without understanding they too have flaws.

I sent this: The one place where we are required to take the Bible literally is the historical execution of Jesus of Nazareth on a cross outside Jerusalem. And if he wasn't somehow raised to unending new life from the dead we would never have heard of him.

For my entire journey in ministry, and in the people helping business (50 years now), I have always integrated theology, psychology and spirituality. While I have had my detractors, after three graduate degrees, two of which are doctorates, I am more persuaded than ever that these disciplines need to be interweaved, especially in light of the mental health crises we face in the current culture. When I meet with detractors, I tend these days to want to echo the words of St. Paul: "From now on let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." - Galatians 6:17