Showing Tag: "faith" (Show all posts)

What I learned about prayer from my friend and her lucky crystal

Posted by Anne Witton on Monday, April 20, 2020, In : Random stuff

I’ve just read ‘Faitheism’ by Krish Kandiah and found it really helpful and thought-provoking. He seeks to diffuse the ‘us vs them’ polarisation that often characterises interactions between Atheists and Christians and explores ways that we can find common ground and forge more meaningful relationships.

In the chapter on suffering he highlights a couple of case studies where Christians have been disciplined or fired from their jobs because they’ve offered to pray with people at wor...

Picture This Thought - Meal [Food]

Posted by Anne Witton on Wednesday, April 17, 2019, In : Video

We live in a world of fast food, drive throughs, TV dinners, working lunches and meals in a shake. But what if eating is meant to be a much more spiritual experience?

In this short reflection, I consider the importance of mealtimes in the early church, in Jewish history and in our own lives as we build community. We can learn some profound truths about God through our relationship with food if we're willing to stop and think.

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Sharing our faith together

Posted by Anne Witton on Monday, October 5, 2015, In : Ministry

I recently did a seminar at the annual TfT conference on the topic of sharing our faith with our gay friends. One of the things that I'm particularly excited about is sharing my faith in community, so here are some thoughts on that.

Evangelism is a team sport. There are three key reasons why sharing our faith together is important:

In the body of Christ, we all have different and complementary roles.
“If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were a...

Why Ben Folds made me cry (And other reflections on emotion)

Posted by Anne Witton on Thursday, July 2, 2015, In : Reflections

I’m quite an emotional person and find that there’s something cathartic about a good cry. And I don’t just cry when I’m upset. I sometimes cry when I’m angry or frustrated, or every when I’m bowled over by joy.

I went to see Ben Folds performing with the Northern Sinfonia at the Sage last year and it was so jaw-droppingly sublime that I found tears of happiness rolling down my cheeks. I felt alive!

When I became a Christian, it was drummed into me that feelings may or may not foll...

Soularium - Inviting spiritual conversations

Posted by Anne Witton on Monday, January 19, 2015, In : Ministry

Last week, I had my first experience of using Soularium to engage with students on campus. It’s a great tool to help people talk about what they believe and it seems like quite a natural way to get a conversation going.

There are 50 cards all with different photos, ranging from abstract and natural scenes to pictures of human activity and objects. The idea is that you invite people to choose 3 cards to answer each of these questions:

Which images would you choose to describe your life at the ...

Creative prayer - 19 ideas to help you pray

Posted by Anne Witton on Monday, July 21, 2014, In : Prayer

Recently, I've been inspired by the power of prayer and challenged to pray more. If we're honest, we all find it difficult to pray sometimes - whether that's because we're wrestling with doubts, going through a time of great pain, or just getting distracted by work, family, household chores, TV or iPhone apps.

Over the years, I've been making a list of ideas to help me pray and one evening at housegroup we all shared things that we found helpful. I hope you find them helpful too.

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Have you ever met Christians who are like Jesus? [Move magazine feature]

Posted by Anne Witton on Thursday, June 19, 2014, In : Move magazine

Move is Agapé's bi-annual magazine and is well worth a read. (You can download PDF copies from the Agapé website). In the latest edition, a question is posed to various members of the public - "Have you ever met Christians who are like Jesus?"

Here are some of the responses:

"No. I know one Christian and she goes to church at Christmas. That's it, I think." Laura

"Truly following no, but they were still nice. Jesus did a lot, feeding the 5000, performing miracles wherever he went, spreading th...
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