Category: June 2026

This particular day is a slightly unusual one. Tonight, my colleague Karen and I are due to be licensed as ‘probationers for the Christian ministry’ – aka, we’ve just completed three brilliant years of formal training at Union Theological College, alongside placement in various churches,¹ and now are accredited in our home church to go and serve in our new one as assistants.

This month has been full of them, and we’re the last out of the gate. It’s also a little unusual (these days) because both of us have come from the same church, where we were (at the moment of writing, still technically are) elders, so double the fun.

Like most of the services of this kind, it is mostly other people doing things: except in the middle, where we are licensed – we come up and answer a series of questions publicly to affirm we understand and commit to our profession of faith and working within the Presbyterian system. This week – even though I’ve heard them several times recently – I was looking back over the questions we will be asked,² and I stuck a little on the second one:

‘So far as you know in your own heart, have you been induced to seek the office of ministry from love to God and from a sincere desire to win souls to Christ and to promote God’s glory?’

I paused a little to examine myself. Is this the reason I have gone through all this? Or could it be for less altruistic reasons? Job security? A certain type of status? The opportunity to badger a captive audience? And so on…

One of the motivators in my life to ultimately pursue ministry was the slow, dawning realisation that, like most professions, those whose serve the church as pastors and teachers do not (or should not) feel any more like an expert than the rest of us. Each are talented in different ways. Some are great explainers of things. Others are talented personal evangelists. Some are natural entertainers. Others are more cerebral. And actually, within a local presbytery – group of ministers and elders – it is most useful to have a healthy range of these things.

During weeks like this one, where I have felt fairly inadequate, this is always an encouragement.

The Night Song is a lesser known collaboration between CityAlight and legendary (in a particular niche!) singer-songwriter, Colin Buchanan. The first time I tried playing it through for our littlest kids, it completely threw me emotionally, but we soldiered on. It is a quiet little song, a lullaby really, but psalmic in its lyricism as it reminds us that God will keep us, no matter the circumstances.

For the first few years of parenthood, I always felt a little silly singing to our kids, despite (as long-term readers will know) taking far too much pride in my relatively short and completely insignificant time as a gigging musician. Yet once I got over the hump, it is a great source of learning and of enjoyment. Little songs like this allow even someone who feels shy about it – like me – to teach some simple truths that people might carry for the rest of their lives. Because they so often do.

On occasions, when I have been privileged to sit beside someone coming towards the end of their life in a care setting, these types of songs are the ones that come to mind. People do not often find comfort singing elaborate worship pieces. They sing, Jesus loves me, this I know. They sing, The Lord is my shepherd. I suspect, in a few decades, some may sing, Jesus says when I am lost, I should come to him… or maybe even something like The Night Song. And it is a most holy thing to be with them, and even to join in, when they do.

So I will attempt to sincerely answer the question above, as worded, when we are licensed later, with memories like this in mind. Of sitting beside our youngest, tapping away on the piano and singing to her that God will hold her through the night. Of sitting beside an older person as she began whispering to herself, I to the hills will lift mine eyes. Of preparing to speak this Sunday evening on the gift of faith, freely given, to all who will place their trust in something outside of themselves. Does this qualify as winning souls and promoting God’s glory? Perhaps it does – one quiet, holy moment at a time.³

1. Shoutout to the heroes of First Dromara, Ballysillian, Dundonald, and our current home at Hill Street. ↩︎
2. Paragraph 291.1.3 if you’re interested! ↩︎
3. 1 Kings 19:11–13 (NIV) – The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ↩︎

Probably around 2005 or so, a uni housemate lent me Songs from a Room 2, the second CD compilation from the RTE series Other Voices. Other Voices walked so that things like NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts could run, honestly. Glen Hansard presented the first series. That second album had a number of artists I ended up trying to see live, and some songs that stayed with me a long time: the electrifying Your World by Declan O’Rourke being one of them.

Years later, and with Father’s Day looming this weekend, I’m minded of another of Declan O’Rourke’s songs: the deeply moving The Stars Over Kinvara, a meditation on fatherhood and the sense of reflection it instigates, and the connection it curates, upon one’s own place in time and space. The eponymous recurring line in each chorus lands perfectly.

I only discovered this week that it was produced by Paul Weller, but that fits too: it has an acoustic guitar tone you would sell your house for.

There’s no deep reason behind selecting this song. It’s poppy. It’s fun. It’s a cult classic. It makes me happy. And the lyric is actually fairly moving in isolation – the narrator attempting to talk himself out of his heartbreak.

The New Found Glory cover is incredible.¹ The shot-for-shot remake with Paul Rudd (also on vocals) and Jimmy Fallon is dedication to the bit par excellence.

Sometimes our attachment to music (or any piece of creative art) is because of its relationship to a significant moment in our life, or the emotion it provokes. Or both. And sometimes, it’s simply because it slaps.

1. There are some bangers, generally, on NFG’s From the Screen to Your Stereo records – if we’re picking another, let’s say Stay with Lisa Loeb also re-recording her vocals. ↩︎

World Cup Fever has officially taken hold in our house, as we await the tournament kick-off, one week from today.¹ I was chatting to some folks earlier in the week whose first tournament memory was France ’98 – a good one – but I go back four years earlier to USA ’94, and specifically Ireland getting out of the group stage only to lose to the Netherlands in the next round. There’s still a branded USA ’94 McDonald’s toy knocking around somewhere.

The tournament famously ended with Roberto Baggio missing his penalty to hand the trophy to Brazil. My memory is that it was on TV late – certainly post-bed-time for seven-year-old me – but I saw it all thanks to my partner-in-crime, my Nana. We were staying “down home” for a few weeks over the summer, as usual, but as soon as my parents went up the street for the evening to the pub, Nana would let me sneak up to watch TV: and seeing the Seleçāo lift the trophy is a core childhood memory.

The same summer, Nana was at peak fandom – Garth Brooks fandom. And the other thing I remember sitting up to watch with her was a Brooks concert film on TV, which she loved. It’s not my favourite Garth Brooks song,² but the one that I have the clearest memory of was her awe at his hit, Standing Outside The Fire – and a key debate about whether, for the particular performance on show, he was wearing flame-retardant trousers!

Listen, Garth Brooks sounds cheesy, but will be forever associated with this favourite aspect of my childhood, so it is cemented in place. Nana passed away when I was nine, so memories aren’t always the clearest. Several memories endure: I picture her laughing at my cousins and I dancing around the kitchen, someone blasting tunelessly into a mouth organ; picking gooseberries off the bushes in her playground of a garden; shaking her head at us messing around at the summer scheme we were sent too, where I think she was helping out as first aider.

I remember her appearing on the Late Late Show along with half the town, and this being A Big Deal. I remember her tutting at my uncle Bobby for filling us up on ice cream (HB sliders, cut straight from the block) on the way home from the bog, before we’d had our dinner. I also remember her, towards the end, struggling to vocalise as she fought aggressive cancer from her hospital bed in Dublin. But I prefer to remember her lastly, standing, silhouetted in the doorway, waving us off as we set off on the long journey back up north each time we left.

And she loved Garth Brooks, and his potentially-flame-retardant trousers. So this one’s for her.

1. I count at least three wall charts already erected on the wall, but pride of place, as always, goes to the latest design by Elliott Quince. Elliott has been selling his wall charts for years to raise funds for Luton & Dunstable Hospital’s Neonatal Unit, and his charts are the best – you might still be able to get one here. ↩︎
2. I endured a lot of Garth Brooks at his peak – the Irish love him – but it’s a toss-up between the humour of Friends in Low Places and the absolute caricature of Callin’ Baton Rouge. ↩︎