Why I Left Church: Factors in church membership

This is the first in a series of posts examining my own experiences of leaving church and later returning to Christian faith and practice as a sort of case study, to see what can be learned about why people leave churches and why they come back. I've been stewing over this idea for a while, but it has been triggered by comments about church growth earlier this week. We are told people are leaving...

Cheerful Voices: There was an old woman who had a little pig

Cheerful Voices by Kathryn Rose My grandfather used to sing this to me. He sang a sort of postlude, too, to a different tune which I have now forgotten. I don't know why pig mortality was something my grandfather was singing to me about, or indeed whether two grown-ups dying of broken hearts is really appropriate material for a four-year-old, but I don't remember it bothering me at all. Some of...