About Me

My Family and I Pictured at East Riddlesdon Hall

Writer, Speaker, Blogger

I live in the beautiful West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom with my lovely wife and two children and have been involved in church leadership for over a decade.

I believe profoundly in the Church as a transformative power within society to build the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. I believe that this kingdom is marked by audacious love and self - sacrifice from the Church. And I believe that I am one of many called to equip the Church with the skills it needs to build this kingdom (and to build it through my participation within the Church).

This is why I write, speak, and blog.

I hope to help you develop in your faith and discipleship walk with Jesus as you progress towards spiritual maturity.

I have created and delivered courses on many various topics including preaching, change, emotional intelligence, leadership, creativity, communication and technical skills. 

I have written and delivered speeches and sermons on complexity and the fourth industrial revolution, learning & development, the progressive church, environmentalism and ethical living and sermon series on various books of the Bible and topics. 

I have a masters degree in Theology, Ministry, and Mission, and an honours degree in Biblical Theology, a diploma in Christian Ministry and a certificate in Christian Counselling from Mattersey Hall Bible College, and a diploma in Adult Learning & Development from the Chartered Institute of Professional Development.

If you would like to book me to speak or write about any of the topics in my blog about then please email me at info@simon-phipps.com

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If God is All Good and All Powerful, Why Does Suffering Exist?

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Philosopher Alvin Plantinga called the problem of suffering “the only good objection to God”. The often quoted argument goes:  “if God is all good (all benevolent) then God has the desire to end suffering, and if God is all-powerful (omnipotent) then God has the ability to end suffering. Therefore if God does not end suffering, then God is either not all good, or is not all-powerful, and is therefore not God”. As Christians, we need to be able to answer this objection to God, to enable us to “give a reason for the faith that we have in Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 3:15). To this end, I want to try and answer this question to help anybody who finds the problem of suffering to be a sticking point or an obstacle in their faith (an argument to explain the problem of suffering is called a “theodicy”). To begin with, I want to go back to the beginning of it all and look at God. Who is God and what is God like? It is worth noting here that this argument takes as given the f...
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The Surprising Truth About The Differences Between The Temptation Narratives of Matthew and Luke and What They Teach Us About Overcoming Temptation

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SANDWICHES - Enhance Your Reading of Mark's Gospel

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As followers of Christ, we look to the Bible as one of our main sources of inspiration and guides in our lives. So it follows that we all want our times reading the Bible to be as rich as possible. Learning more about the Bible is one way to help with this. It is particularly helpful when we know the types of things that the authors of the books used to aid us in this task. To this end I wanted to talk about something that has enriched my reading of the gospel of Mark: Markan Sandwiches (also called interpolations ). Essentially, what Mark does is get one story within his gospel, and inserts it inside another story ; this serves the purpose of giving both stories a greater sense of meaning. It’s purpose is to make the reader stop and think “Mark is trying to tell us something important here”. In practice it looks like this: Story 1 – Introduction Story 2 – Introduction & Conclusion Story 1 – Conclusion We can see where the idea of the sandwich com...
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