About

I’m Dave Faulkner, a Methodist minister in the UK. I previously blogged here. I’m a moderate evangelical-charismatic Christian with strong tendencies in a ‘missional‘ direction.

I’m married to the lovely Debbie, and we have two wonderful children, Rebekah and Mark. I enjoy all things Web 2.0, digital photography with my Nikon D750 and Z 6 and I like watching sport. I enjoy football (soccer to our friends who live left of the Atlantic) and support Tottenham Hotspur, because I am loyal to the team nearest to where I grew up rather than seeing football teams as a brand.

And I love cricket, which I believe is the sport of heaven – it’s also the only game I was ever remotely good at playing. I prefer the proper five-day game rather than the crash bang wallop of Twenty Twenty: it’s subtle, not boring!

I also love contemporary music. Which takes me into this question: why call this blog Big Circumstance? It’s the title of a 1989 CD by the Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn. The CD takes its title from a track entitled Shipwrecked At The Stable Door. Big Circumstance seems to be Cockburn’s name for divine providence, where we are led to places we might not always want to go, but it proves right (something that I have known to be true on more than one occasion in my life).

And everything is ‘shipwrecked at the stable door’ where Jesus was born. The incarnation changes the world. This is something I have come to appreciate more as I am increasingly influenced by missional theology. ‘As the Father sent me so I send you,’ said Jesus. But how was he sent? ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’

For more on the meaning of the song, see here.

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UPDATE, 4th July 2014: I am a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.co.uk. I used to be a member of this before I moved this blog from Typepad to WordPress (when it became bigcircumstance.com). At the time, WordPress didn’t allow such arrangements on wordpress.com blogs such as this, but I recently noticed that their terms and conditions had changed. I have thus today reapplied to join the programme. It should mean that in blogs from now on, links to products such as books, music or films may be affiliate links that earn me a small commission.