News and reflections at the close of 2025

Personal news

The big personal news at the end of 2025 is, on the one hand, that I think I'm very close to submitting my PhD Thesis, and on the other hand that from next week I will be serving part-time as an Associate Pastor at Magdalen Road Church here in Oxford.  I am enormously grateful to those who have helped me through this long period of study and writing, and also to the elders and congregation at Magdalen Road who have given me the opportunity to dip my toe back into the water of pastoral ministry.  Looking forward to that opportunity has also stirred up lots of reflections on the close of my last period of pastoral ministry, and I realise that when I wrote my reflections on that at the time I hadn't really grasped how deeply traumatic it had been.  Prayers appreciated as we as a family move into this new season.

Church reflections

One interesting phenomenon that seems to have ramped up in the last year is the influx into the church of people from the political/cultural 'right', at least some of whom seem to have become convinced that Christianity is an essential component of Western civilisation, and therefore a potential bulwark against what they see as the decline of that civilisation.  This mirrors the trickle of more liberal minded folk into the church over the last few years, who seemed themselves to have realised that only the Christian message could provide a philosophical ground and foundation for the liberal values they hold dear.  Both sides are right, of course, in the sense that the particular shape of Western civilisation and the liberal values of the early Twenty-first Century do owe a great deal to Christianity.  Both sides are wrong, though, in imagining that it will be possible to turn to Christianity purely to bolster social values or a political agenda.  As Lewis has one of his characters put it, one might as well try to use the staircase to heaven as a shortcut to the local chemists.

As for the church, she will just have to accept newcomers with a patient testimony to the reality of life in Christ, and a patient rebuke to those elements of ideology on left and right which are incompatible with that life.  The church needs to stand on her own ground, and speak clearly and even handedly to right and to left.

I wonder whether this means we will see more of the culture wars playing out inside churches, and I worry for what that might look like.  I think evangelicalism, on the whole, has no coherent theological vision for society and for political engagement, and in fact many evangelical leaders give the impression that the best we can hope for is a sort of benign, neutral secularism in the public sphere.  This is unlikely to satisfy culture warriors on either side, but more importantly seems theologically rather vapid.

Perhaps some of the responses to the news that there will be a UK version of The Gospel Coalition already reflect elements of this culture war.  Certainly the write up in Evangelical Times, which reflects the more conservative strand of the evangelical world, is extremely negative.  Personally, I think that write up scandalously misrepresents the people who are mentioned in it, and I wonder whether from the author's perspective it is possible to engage thoughtfully with the modern world without being accused of social liberalism.  On the other hand, I tend to think TGCUK is a bad idea; I am not sure we need more umbrella organisations, which seem to me to be a classic evangelical response to our lack of a distinct vision for catholicity.

Social reflections

Outside the church, political life in 2025 just became more fractured and depressing.  Government seems incapable of delivering.  Populist parties on left and right are growing, both equally disturbing to my mind, and it does indeed seem that the centre cannot hold.  Because I lean slightly right, I am particularly alarmed by the rise of non-conservative right wingers, and by the way some are embracing them simply to enjoy the sight of the liberal consensus taking a beating.  We should be wary of what might end up replacing that liberal consensus.

It seems pretty evident already that local services are failing, for lack of will or resource, and I wonder how local churches - already stretched pretty thin - might be able to fill some of the gaps.  We may need to review our programmes of activities, and ask ourselves more rigorously how our resources can be best used to testify to the reality of the world renewed in Christ.  Middle class evangelicalism might need to specifically ask about our ability and willingness to serve the poorest.

Goodbye to 2025

One of the questions I come back to again and again is that of time.  I agree with Augustine that time is an extremely difficult thing to understand.  As another present slips into the past, I continue to be very grateful that in Christ God has made himself a partaker of our time, and has shown himself able to gather up all the times of our lives to share in his own eternal life.  So, goodbye to 2025, but of course not quite goodbye; rather this year is laid down in the archives, to form part of the strangely glorious whole which for now we can only vaguely imagine.