BIBLE STUDY SUBJECT:
In response to a commission to submit possible responses to the question of IS THEIR A GOD? and how does one respond to THE QUESTION OF EVIL & SUFFERING I submitted this short two page discussion paper....
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Friday, November 07, 2025
Bible Course 2.0 Supplementary Resources
I'll be using this post as a depository for links to the resources I created and used as a supplement to the material provided by the Bible Society's Bible Course (new version)
Session 1: Bible Overview
Warm up Presentation: Presentation1.pdf - Google Drive
Supplementary Questions: God is the Question.pdf - Google Drive
On Biblical Authority: Biblical Authority.pdf - Google Drive
Session 2: Early Genesis
Warm up Presentation: Early Genesis.pdf - Google Drive
Supplementary Questions: God is The Question 2.pdf - Google Drive
Sessions 3: Exodus
Warm up Presentation: Presentation3.pdf - Google Drive
Supplementary Questions: God is the Question 3.pdf - Google Drive
AI Google notes: Notes.pdf - Google Drive
NB: Caveat: AI algorithms are based on the human neural model and have been trained using human generated texts. In the above "Notes" document I have used AI as a natural language interface to interrogate those texts for sought after information. Because of the clear human component involved in the creation of AI, AI responses must be treated as opinions. Therefore just as one treats the opinions of any human being with caution so must we treat AI output.
See: Quantum Non-Linearity: The AI Garbage Bubble?
Session 4: Judges, Kings & Chaos
Judges, Kings & Chaos: Judges, Kings & Chaos B.pdf - Google Drive
Supplementary Questions: God is the Question 4.pdf - Google Drive
Notes: Notes.pdf - Google Drive
Sessions 5 to 8 to follow....
BIBLE COURSE 1.0
The notes I made for version 1.0 of the Bible course can be found by going to these posts
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: The Bible Society's "Bible Course"
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session II: Genesis
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session III: Exodus.
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session IV: Judges & Kings
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session V: Exile & Prophets
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session VI: Jesus and the Gospels
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session VII: Acts and the Church
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course Session VIII: Revelation
Sunday, August 03, 2025
A Monumental Gamble
The above is a photograph I took of an article in the Spring 2025 edition of a church magazine called Idea. The article is by Richard Gamble who is the driving force behind the building of the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer pictured above. I first took cognizance of The Wall in this post:
Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: The Eternal Wall of Answered prayer
The Wall (yet to be built) is a truly monumental sized mobius strip filled with the accounts of answered prayer. In my original October 2020 post I reported the Guardian Newspaper telling us that the wall was....
An enormous Christian monument, more than twice the size of the Angel of the North, is to be built on the outskirts of Birmingham, fulfilling a vision its instigator says came from God.
The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer will be constructed using a million bricks, each representing a prayer from a member of the public and its outcome. The aim is to “encourage and inspire people going through the storms of life”, said Richard Gamble, the project’s chief executive and a former chaplain of Leicester City football club.
The monument, which
has been granted planning permission with work to begin next year, has three
goals: to “preserve the Christian heritage of the nation”; encourage prayer; and
“proclaim Jesus for the country”.
Well, nearly five years later the wall hasn't even been started. In the article above Richard Gamble admits that the project is facing two problems a) Getting funding, although that, according to Gamble, is easier than b) finding those 1 million answered prayers of which Gamble says that so far he only has 40,000. He goes on to say why he thinks support for the project is patchy. But in spite of that the article ends by telling us that construction of the wall is to begin this year.
Monday, April 21, 2025
The Four to Six Mix
The 4 to 6 mix seems to be pretty steady although my sample taken
on this Easter Sunday returned a 3 to 7 mix.
It is several years since I wrote on the subject of the "4 to 6 mix"; that is the ratio of males to females in the church I attend. In my last post on the subject I recorded it as being steady at 4:6 and in an earlier post I was amazed that my very rough & informal sampling had returned the same ratio that had cropped up in a far more formal and rigorous church wide study. (See also the Australian stats above)
I've been sampling the male to female ratio on and off for around 18 years now and yesterday's count has finally come up with a different ratio: I was sitting in the gallery and counted the people in the two main pew blocks on the ground floor: Of the 112 people in these two blocks 34 were male and 78 female; that's a roughly 3 to 7 mix! Perhaps the variation has something to do with an increase in attendance on Easter Sunday.
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
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