Fundamentalism – of the right sort

After Paris? Sick of fundamentalism?  How about fundamentalism of the right sort.  Heard the one about the male High Church priest leading Bible Studies with the female Pentecostal pastor?  Yes – in one prison I know it happens.  And it is unremarkable.  There is ready blurring of denominational boundaries in prison that is good.  Chaplains focus on the things that really matter – on God and his revelation in Jesus.  It is not that the other things are forgotten, it is just that they are seen, rightly, as additions, that can be helpful or distractions.    (And when I work abroad as a mission partner I saw the same.)

If the needs of the prison bring chaplains of different sorts together, the time and pressure on prisoners pushes them apart.  Prisoners have a lot of time to think about all sorts of things,

Purposeless BSC?

“Purposeless?” Shock – my work has never been called that before. And after my presentation at the 2015 ICAEW Charity Conference, that is what one person said.  I was presenting the Balanced Scorecard to 60 in a packed seminar room.  I made it a lively affair and my focus was on getting sensible numbers together for their organisations and making sure that they had meaning in the first place.

Halloween: vain and vacuous

At the front door, we cried out “trick-or-treat”, then uttered ghoul like shrieks and wails.  Our hosts for this party we were attending opened the door, and then were confused.  They saw I and my wife doing this “ironically”.  But also were confronted by a gaggle of kids doing this for real, who had opportunistically come up behind us.

“Ironic” yes.  But “for real”?  Well perhaps not.  No one does Halloween for real.  Do they.  It’s