Publications

 My most recent book is How To Eat Bread: 21 Nourishing Ways to Read the Bible. You can find links to buy it as a paperback or e-book at various retailers on the Hachette website here. 

I really hope you enjoy it! I wrote this book because I kept being asked for an accessible guide to how to make sense of reading the Bible that didn't assume a very conservative evangelical interpretation was the only option. The book has three sections. The first introduces seven ways that the Biblical texts themselves approach reading and interpreting earlier scripture. The second section looks at early church and medieval approaches to Bible reading, showing how much variation there was in the past. The idea that 'in the past everyone just took every word literally' is nonsense. Finally, the third section explains some of the more contemporary approaches that are common in academic biblical study but not necessarily that well known in wider circles. If you've wondered what preachers mean when they mention 'form criticism' or 'a hermeneutic of suspicion', this chapter de-mystifies some of that jargon! You might not want to use these approaches yourself, but my hope is that you'll feel much more confident in handling different bits of the Bible when you've read this overview.

The book is ideal for church study group use, and I'm happy to have a zoom Q&A with church groups who are reading it!

Do have a look, and see what you think. 

You can read the introduction using the 'look inside' feature on Amazon.  

 

Previous books:

Most of those below are published by SPCK and can be bought post-free from their website

The Teenage Prayer Experiment Notebook (SPCK)

  Written by myself and Noah Threlfall-Holmes, my 13 year old son, this book began life as a blog exploring different methods of prayer: I came up with the ideas and he reviewed them. We then found lots of youth groups were using the blog, and we have now gathered feedback and comments on all the various ideas from a wide variety of teenagers from all over the country.
This book is an interactive prayer journal designed for teenagers to use: it encourages you to not just read about prayer, but give it a go, and then review the experience.

An ideal confirmation gift for any teens in your life, or great for a church youth group to work through together.

Following this, versions for 8-12 year olds and for adults have also been published, as The Prayer Experiment Notebook and The Little Book of Prayer Experiments.

I also have three poems published in 'Learning to Love', ed. Chris Goan (Proost, 2014). This can be ordered or downloaded from the Proost website here.

The Essential History of Christianity  (SPCK, 2012).

•  Being a Chaplain, edited with M. Newitt, (SPCK, 2011).
  

• Monks and Markets: Durham Cathedral Priory 1460-1520 (OUP, 2005).