Best kids DVD movies 2009

1. Bolt
its hard to fault Pixar – I don’t think they are the masters of Computer Generated Animation and i don’t think they have made a duff movie yet. This is a winning combination of a cute canine hero, a plot involving getting lost (see finding nemo), some lovable character (Rhino the pet hamster in [...]

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Management books for church leaders

The Israelites left Egypt and were given gold jewelry and out of that gold they decorated the tabernacle. The concept of gold plundered from egypt has helped many christians to understand that there is value in borrowing things from our culture. You could argue that the book of proverbs does a similar thing allowing the [...]

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Nintendo DSI

Is it worth upgrading to a DSI?
Here’s our logic.
1. Our old nintendo DS lite is coming to the end of its life and so trading one in for £75 is a good idea as it’s resale value is well below that.
2. The fun to be had with the camera – with its interactive filters, movement [...]

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Best Wii Games for kids

I have three primary school children (aged 10 to 6) and here are the games we love the best:
10. Wii Play
A great way to buy an wii extra controller and get some fun games too. ( A wii controller costs £25 anyway so you are only paying £4 for this game.) My kids really like [...]

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Living with No Line on the Horizon Special Edition

I have lived with this album for nearly a week now. Listened to U2 talk about it on Radio 4. Had on constantly through Spotify and now have finally bought the thing on ITUNES. I even went the whole hog and bought the special edition.
You need to remember I have been a fan since Unforgetable [...]

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No Line on the Horizon – no tunes on the album?

Ok the title might be a bit harsh – but it’s been a 5 year weight since How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and the hype surrounding this new album has been through the roof – loads of ad slots on BBC1. Bono has been telling everyone this is their best album yet. This is [...]

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Best Christmas Presents for Pastors

Christmas is such a busy time for church leaders, they work hard all year  and while everyone else is having a winter break it¹s often a pastor¹s busiest time of the year. Here are some gift ideas for you (your homegroup, your prayer triplet, your youth team, your eldership etc) to give to your local [...]

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Best HD Camcorder

I have been using my digital camera to capture video clips of my kids. But it dawned on me as I finally got round to editting some of it that I was going to be looking back on these relatively low quality clips one day and wish that I had invested in a proper camcorder. [...]

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Forget Shakespeare, Davinci…

“Forget the works of Shakespeare or Artistotle or Beethoven or da Vinci, no cultural artefact is more central to western civilisation than the bible.” So wrote Patrick Reardon of the Chicago Tribune just before he wrote a glowing review of a new “Illuminated version of the Bible.”
If you’ve never read the Bible from cover to [...]

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Survivors

We had the first installment of the new BBC mini series survivors.
It kicks off with a similar plot line to I AM LEGEND – with a deadly bug that wipes out 90 per cent of the population of planet earth getting wiped out. It’s a scarily realistic premise with a killer flu bug turning into [...]

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Human – the killers

One of my favourite bands has released a new single:

It’s a cracking tune combining a New Order vibe with a kind of Bruce Springsteen stadium sound.
There has been some controversy about the lyrics…
Are we human or are we…. some say denser some say dancer…
Well Brandon Flowers has made it very clear [...]

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Indestructable Camera?

As a gadget loving family we have had our fair share of mishaps. When he was 4 years old my son washed our digital camera in the sink – that was the end of that camera. My wife left her nice slinky phone in her pocket and then washed her jeans – that was the [...]

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Top 10 books on the emergent church

1. The Church in Emerging Culture, Leonard Sweet (Ed), Emergentys, Zondervan
This book is authored by a great team of writers including author and thinker Leonard Sweet (Author and thinker), Andy Crouch of Christianity Magazine, Professor and reformed theologian Michael Horton, Frederica Mathewes-Green (an Orthodox believer), Erwin Raphael McManus from Mosaic church and Brian D. McLare. [...]

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Gone Baby Gone

It’s been a while since Ben Affleck has been in a good film.
Good Will Hunting – was a great way to make a debut
Changing Lanes – was an interesting piece
Sum of all Fears – was pretty poor
Pearl Harbour – was awful
Dare Devil- was worse than it should have been
But when he gets behind the camera [...]

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New Ipod Nano

Those clever guys at Apple have brought out the new Nano.
It’s even thinner with a nicer screen.
Cool features include:
1. Shake to Shuffle – bored of the song you are on – just shake the nano to get a random track
2. Genius – let the nano make a playlist of similar sounding music for you
3. Portrait [...]

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

A review by Joel Kandiah (aged 9) and Krish kandiah (aged 36).
This is fictional story based on the best selling children’s book by the irish Writer John Boyne. It tells the story of a friendship developing between Bruno the  8 year old (he’s 9 in the book) son of Nazi Concentration Camp commander and Shmuel [...]

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bloggers day

It would be great to see you at our bloggers day in September please let people know about this opportunity to explore the implications of blogging. It will take place at the Evangelical Alliance HQ, Whitefield House, 186 kennington road. email a.lilley@eauk.org for more information.

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Suprised by Hope

Here’s a review of NT Wright’s wonderful Surprised by Hope on Christianity magazine’s website.

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Incomparable

Here’s another review on Christianity’s website, this time of Andrew Wilson’s excellent book Incomparable.

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Reformed and Always Reforming

Thought you might like to see my review of Roger Olson’s intriguing book from the Christianity website.

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