iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

🇺🇦 is quietly having a very good Spring: * modest but real battlefield advances * About a fifth of 🇷🇺 oil export capacity knocked out * 🇷🇺 booted from Starlink * 🇮🇷 drone production presumably badly damaged & more of it needed for home use rather than export to 🇷🇺 * Orbán gone

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Here are all our services in the Wellsprings Benefice between Palm Sunday and Easter Day. If you're in the central part of Wiltshire, come and join us.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Holy Week starts tomorrow. It's called that because it's the holiest week of the year for Christians. If you call yourself a Christian, YOU SHOULD BE IN CHURCH FREQUENTLY OVER THE NEXT WEEK and absolutely on Easter Day, 5 April. Watching YouTube videos doesn't count! 👇 👇 👇

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

You can have both Churchill *and* animals on the petrol rationing coupons...

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Gutted to have come so close, but I think France deserved the championship over 5 matches, to be fair. Chapeau! #6nations #FRAvENG

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Why is Anglicanism's doom so often foretold? And why has it yet to come to pass? Click through to read me in The Critic on why the attempted an Anglican schism fizzled out & why a female Archbishop hasn't outraged Africa—but liberal policies on homosexuality have. thecritic.co.uk/schrodingers...

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Great piece, and also worth listening to this @listentotimesradio.bsky.social follow up—@murielzagha.bsky.social explains how the Book of Common Prayer's beauty made her a Church of England churchgoer from a French secular background. www.thetimes.com/radio/show/2... (Starts 3 hr 27 min 15 sec in).

thetimes.com

Kate McCann and Stig Abell with Times Radio Breakfast | Times Radio | The Times and the Sunday Times

Listen to Times Radio live for the latest breaking news, expert analysis and well-informed discussion covering the biggest stories of the day.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

The bombing of that girls' school was a horrific incident and I condemn it without reservation. I take it you've also been quick to condemn what Iran's government does to maim and kill its own schoolgirls? www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

amnesty.org

Iran: Millions of schoolgirls at risk of poisoning - Amnesty International

The rights to education, health and life of millions of schoolgirls are at risk amid ongoing chemical gas attacks deliberately targeting girls’ schools in Iran. Since November 2022, thousands of schoo...

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I'm pleased to have another academic paper published, this one in Cambridge University Press' prestigious Ecclesiastical Law Journal. This one is open access so you can have a read: “Discovering Anglicanism – ecclesiology at Lambeth Conferences 1867–1998”. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

cambridge.org

Discovering Anglicanism – ecclesiology at Lambeth Conferences 1867–1998 | Ecclesiastical Law Journal | Cambridge Core

Discovering Anglicanism – ecclesiology at Lambeth Conferences 1867–1998 - Volume 28 Issue 1

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

cambridge.org

Discovering Anglicanism – ecclesiology at Lambeth Conferences 1867–1998 | Ecclesiastical Law Journal | Cambridge Core

Discovering Anglicanism – ecclesiology at Lambeth Conferences 1867–1998 - Volume 28 Issue 1

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

This war might well end up being a very bad idea, but a *lot* of Iranians seem delighted Trump and Netanyahu are bombing their country, which says a lot about their evil bastard of a government. If your concerned public statement doesn't mention that, you're missing something big.

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Reposted by Gerry Lynch

Malcolm Sinclair 💀✍️ @malcolmwriter.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

I’ve decided to use this year to identify, & write about (not sure in what form yet), the 50 best village churches in #Wiltshire This is the closest contender to home, Holy Cross in Seend, where I met its Rector today, the effervescent @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social More posts to follow from here.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Read a more considered article on 60 years of declining Catholicism in Latin America, Pentecostalism’s explosive growth, and the rise in the last decade of believers who’ve left all organised churches. gerrylynch.co.uk/2026/02/13/l... 7/7

gerrylynch.co.uk

Once Pentecostalism Rose in Latin America. Now the Churchless are Growing.

Latin American Catholicism's decline once benefitted Pentecostals; those departing now seem to leave organised faith—but still pray to God.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Yet Latin America's "religiously unaffiliated" aren't European atheists. Most still believe in God and pray daily—as much as practicing Christians do here. They've rejected structures, but not faith. It's a distinctly Latin American form of secularisation. 6/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Recently, things have changed. Since the 2010s, Catholicism still haemorrhages adherents, but Protestants are growing more slowly. Instead, growing numbers of Latin Americans are walking away from organised religion altogether. 5/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

81% of those converting to Protestantism cited a personal connection with God being a reason; 69% preferred the worship style. Pentecostals themselves would claim genuine spiritual encounter was behind these historic shifts in denomination. 4/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

The poor the liberation theologians claimed to speak for were walking out the door. "The Catholics opted for the poor; the poor opted for Pentecostalism." Neither did the turn back to the Right get them to return. 3/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Latin America's Catholic share fell from 90% in the 1960s to 57% by 2020. These were tumultuous decades, with liberation theology’s emergence and then suppression. The Pentecostal turn that began during liberation theology's golden age got even faster after its suppression. 2/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

For fifty years, Latin America's big religious story was straightforward: Catholics were becoming Pentecostals. But recent data suggests things have changed. Catholicism continues to decline, but the recent beneficiary may not be Protestantism, but the religiously unaffiliated. 1/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

The Light came as a tiny baby who grew up to be King —of an otherworldly realm, who gave His life for His friends thus opening eternal life to wll who trust in Him. God comes to rescue us when we don’t know we need help, in ways we could never imagine. 3/3 www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/12/04/l...

gerrylynch.co.uk

Live in Light (A Message for Advent)

The speed with which the optimistic era around the millennium passed should teach us to seek eternal, not worldly, riches.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Advent is the beginning of the Church year and a time for new beginnings. The Church begins a journey that will last a year, which starts with people longing for light to come into a world that was often dark. The light indeed came, but in ways they could never have imagined. 2/3

Inside a dimly lit stone church, a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus stands in a niche on the left wall. She cradles a glowing blue glass votive lamp that glows softly. Below the statue, two white candles burn on an ornate wrought-iron stand. To the right, a purple-draped altar is visible, adorned with a white frontal cloth bearing a gold cross. Above the altar hang two colorful religious paintings in the style of early 20th-century sacred art: one depicting robed figures (likely an Annunciation scene), the other showing two women in flowing red and blue medieval-style dresses in a garden. The atmosphere is quiet, warm, and reverent, lit mainly by the flickering candles and the small lamp.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

It seems only a few years ago that we were living at a time of optimism: of low inflation, low interest rates, and cheap travel, when the Internet was making the economy stronger and bringing people together. The mood has shifted as these material things have passed away. 1/3

A nighttime photograph of a tall, intricately decorated Gothic-style church spire illuminated against a deep blue-black sky. The spire rises dramatically, adorned with ornate stonework, pointed arches, and geometric patterns, tapering to a sharp point topped by a small red aircraft warning light. The dark sky is speckled with faint stars and subtle streaks of light, but especially by the constellation Orion, giving a serene and majestic atmosphere.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Final point: Jesus cites Moses & the burning bush in arguing with the Sadducees—Moses' first encounter with God that transformed his earthly life beyond imagining. Have faith in the Resurrection, and you may find you too are transformed. Read it all here: www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/11/10/w... 7/7

gerrylynch.co.uk

Why Are You Here?

You are a seed for something much greater & the universe as nothing but soil compared to the glories you were made for in the Resurrection.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

So too our resurrection—the same self, gloriously transformed. We are seeds. The universe, in all its glory, but the soil in which we grow. How much greater is the whole cosmos than the soil? So much greater will our resurrected existence be than our lives now. 6/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

If this sounds woo-ey, remember how we take as given metamorphosis in the physical world: from tadpole to frog & caterpillar to butterfly. They are transformed to move in new dimensions, once beyond their conception, yet remaining the individuals they always were. 5/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Jesus tells them we’ll be transformed, something like angels, beyond the need for marriage. Our materialist age tries to reduce human beings to biorobots, collections of chemicals, controlled by electrical signals—but instinctively we know we’re also beings of soul and spirit. 4/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Thinking they’ve shown how ridiculous He is, they ask Jesus whose wife she’ll be after resurrection. They make the same mistake many of us do—Christian Resurrection isn’t about life extension but transformation into something different, in a state where time is somehow other. 3/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

They posed a bizarre story like something straight out of a Coen Brothers plot: a woman’s husband dies soon after they marry, and his brother steps in as their laws required; then she works her way through seven brothers as they die one after the next. 2/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

If you think the idea of resurrection is absurd, you aren’t alone. It offends our scientific worldview, and even in the ancient world, the Sadducees—the smart, rationalist, high social class, scholars of Jesus’ Palestine—totally made fun of Him for believing in Resurrection. 1/7

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Surely that "should of" been "breathe exclusively" rather than "breath exclusively"?

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

One of the lessons I’ve learned from these recent years of gathering crisis is that too many of those dreams of progress, the ones that have started looking in trouble, thought they could change human nature, or flew entirely in the face of it. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/07/27/p...

gerrylynch.co.uk

Prayer, Persistence, and Peace—A Sermon

The world won't be perfect; but we're told to pray for God's Kingdom to come on Earth. How do we resolve this tension?

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

It was a privilege to review @dannydvincent.bsky.social's documentary for BBC World Service's Heart and Soul on those who escape North Korea and then become Christians as they rebuild their lives in the South.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

The Church of England Newspaper (@churchnewspaper.bsky.social) has paused publication while it seeks a financial way forward: it had been supported by media entrepreneur Keith Young who died in February. Thoughts with staff at what must be an unsettling & upsetting time. mailchi.mp/012009fa66be...

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

We all like a summer evening drive... Corfe Castle, Dorset, 9 July 2025.

A blue tractor pulling a red trailer drives down a narrow street lined with historic stone buildings. The architecture features sloped roofs, chimneys, and small windows. On the left, a building displays a sign with a coat of arms, while on the right, a building has a sign reading "GRYC." In the background, a stone church with a tall spire stands under a clear blue sky.

A red convertible car drives past a historic stone building with a sloped, tiled roof and multiple chimneys. The building, labeled "Bankes Arms," features small dormer windows and decorative stonework. The scene is set against a clear blue sky with lush green trees and hills in the background.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

We expect the saints to be serious, humourless, and so holy halos float over them as they walk down the street. But the Bible records them as real people, with complex characters—and if Jesus truly is God made human, then God has a sharp sense of humour! www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/07/20/w...

gerrylynch.co.uk

Would God Wind You Up?

If Jesus truly is God made man, then God has an acute sense of humour!

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

In this week's Church Times radio review, I cover Sunday exploring if a blasphemy law is emerging by the back door; and a weird hypermasculine priest in Texas; and Heart and Soul visiting Syrian Alawites who have fled to Lebanon after sectarian mass murder. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

churchtimes.co.uk

Radio review: Sunday and Heart and Soul

IT WAS nice to have a genuinely meaty debate on Sunday (Radio 4). Hamit Coskun’s conviction for publ...

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I remembered the time in a Church in Belfast I heard that bit about the Parthians and Medes being read in a strong Iranian accent, and so preached on the Church's surprising growth in Iran in recent decades, and martyrdom, and believing because of the works... www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/06/08/m...

gerrylynch.co.uk

Modern Medes and Parthians—A Sermon for Pentecost

Despite persecution and even martyrdom, the Church in Iran has grown rapidly in recent decades. It might be the Holy Spirit at work!

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

My radio review this week is quite Radio 4 focused—Clare Balding's Ramblings as she takes on the Camino; Nick Sturdee on Ukraine's disputing Orthodox denominations on From Our Own Correspondent.

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

The Tankwa Karoo National Park as a summer afternoon turns to evening. #SouthAfrica

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

PS – Germany is pushing back most asylum speakers at the border starting last week. The era of mass migration into Western Europe is going to end rapidly over the next few years. And that is indeed the net product of countless democratic votes. 6/6

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

A concomitant of Labour abandoning radical proggies to keep the working-class onside—next time there’s a Batley/Wakefield/Anderton Park school situation, the British state is going head-to-head with a non-violent but deeply ugly side of British Islam. I hope they’re all ready. 5/6

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

If they do get it right, they could destroy Reform, a party which nobody is quite sure about whose leader people are very unsure about. Here’s the Danish People’s Party’s parliamentary election results: from 21.1% in 2015 to 2.6% in 2022. 4/6

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Labour has better fine control over migration policy than EU member Denmark, but employers have no automatic instant access to south/eastern EU workers if labour shortages bite. Labour also probably has to deal with better funded migration NGOs and far more obstructive courts. 3/6

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

If Labour fails to reduce numbers of arrivals substantially it will break them electorally. But both the right-wingers and open borders folks simply assuming this will fail, for different reasons, are wrong. Something comparable already worked across the North Sea. 2/6

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

On Starmer’s migration speech—Denmark’s Social Democrats did this. It didn’t crash the economy but did crash the far-right People’s Party. There’s plenty of room for them to screw up the implementation, but this has already worked in a broadly comparable NW European country. 1/6

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

A week ago I'd never heard of Robert Prevost and a month ago I didn't know what a cardinal *actually* was, but in this thread I will with great authority explain why Pope Leo XIV is wonderful/awful/evil... (delete to fit clickbait target) 1/116

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Gerry Lynch @therealgerrylynch.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Was 13 years old in 1968, the most tumultuous year in his hometown's history; 11 years old when the Cicero March took place. Fascinating formative influences. 3/3

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