Since DynDns announced they were withdrawing their free offering, I have been looking for an alternative. Turns out Microsoft’s Azure DNS has a REST API, and python library. While not free, it is very cheap – so far my DNS costs with Azure are running at 1p/day (although I only incur 5k queries a day). […]

I’ve been reading a book called “Marathon: A Manual for Bivocational Ministry” by Doug Black Jr, which has raised some interesting ideas, and is making me revisit some of my assumptions around ministry. The thrust of his book is that Self Supporting Ministry (which he calls Bivocational) is better than ’employed’ ministry in his case. […]

Exciting times on the curacy front, as my training incumbent has now moved on to a new post, leaving us in a vacancy at the church. We are blessed to have a “full time” associate minister, another training curate (who is “full time”), and several other “part-time” clergy kicking about, so in terms of both […]

Just in the last few weeks, I’ve realised that I think I’m over the “hump” of my curacy. Curacies are strange beasts – perhaps even more so as an SSM curate doing one day a week (cue “but vicar’s only work one day a week” joke) – in that so far I have spent the […]

I had the amazing privilege of solemnising my first wedding a couple of weeks ago. I genuinely could not have asked or hoped for a more lovely couple and congregation, and it was a joy to play a small part in the new life were were choosing and vowing to start together. I am still […]

One of the main aspects of the curacy for me has been about growing in confidence – but not perhaps in the way one might think. When I first started leading services at St Mark’s (especially the informal ones) to be honest I hated it – I felt like I had no idea what I […]

The following is the text for my reflection during a service of 3 hours at the cross today. The theme is “approaching the cross”, and we start “from the outside looking in – the view from the edge (the crowd)” Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You would destroy […]

As I have written before, in the Church of England we have three orders of ordination; Deacon, Priest (or Presbyter), and Bishop. The usual pattern for those expecting to be ordained priest is to serve the first year as a deacon, and then be ordained priest the following year. The diaconal year is an opportunity […]

Sometimes I deeply dislike computers, especially when they try and be too clever. It’s actually a little bit scary (The Terminator‘s looking less and less far fetched!). Recent incident – true story. My website now runs on my own server at home, at the end of my broadband pipe. Despite what the provider claims it […]

One of the things I have learnt from my spiritual director is to try to incorporate some silence whenever I pray. By which I mean inner as well outer silence (which is much harder!). I sometimes feel like Chidi from The Good Place, who says his mind is like a waste disposal unit with a […]