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- Mark Greene on Black & White

Fools rush in where angels and techno-geeks fear to tread.

Two weeks ago my idea of a computer game was a few hands of solitaire on a laptop. Admittedly, I would occasionally get on the Playstation and clumsily pinball a careening Corvette or a McLaren Mercedes from crash barrier to crash barrier, but the truth is that I am to computer games what Mike Tyson is to ballet – just not programmed that way.

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- by Mark Greene

My first encounter with the now extremely famous Harry Potter was swifter than a lizard’s lick.

I had gone out in search of a gift for my god-daughter and found myself, as I often do on such occasions, in a place filled with treasures and glossy delights, in an Aladdin’s cave in my very own high street - in short, my local bookshop.

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Mark Greene is stunned by The Lord of the Rings. And gripped by the questions it poses.

Excellence sometimes stuns.

It silences the cynic. It punctures the windbag. It is bigger than the categories the critic wants to limit it to - remember the grim soldierettes of technique that were Soviet bloc women gymnasts before Olga-the-pixie-Korbut elevated the sport, momentarily at least, into an art-form fit to express the joy and exuberance of a teenager.

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- by Mark Greene

This year's Whitbread prize-winner Philip Pullman is, as you might expect, a fine writer and he's a fine writer with a cause. His cause, as he himself has made clear, is to destroy Christianity, and to liberate the world from any faith in a personal God.

The Amber Spyglass, the first children's novel to win the award, is the final volume in his hugely popular trilogy, His Dark Materials. It's a collection that ironically seems to have assured him a place in the pantheon of childrens' authors alongside C S Lewis and Tolkien, writers whose Christian faith he views as both misplaced and corrosive. Indeed, he regards the Narnia books with intense loathing:

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- Mark Greene on the state of the Church in 2005

What's the state of the Church in 2005? Moving forward? Or backwards?

Mark Greene delivered the Week 2 'Keswick Lecture' this year, noting a number of positive trends but also exploring two barriers: first, the theological impact of the sacred-secular divide in Christian mission and Christian living; and second, what happens to evangelism and personal transformation when we neglect the art of disciple-making.

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If you want to change the world - and who doesn't - then Anita Roddick's book Business as Unusual is a high octane, fast-paced inspiration to do just that.

Passionately and persuasively, Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, demonstrates how values can shape business, rather than the other way round, how a great cause can be preserved despite commercial pressures and how someone's core individuality can remained uncompromised in the often character-corroding crucible of intense competition. All that and everything you ever wanted to know about Ghanaian shea nut butter.

All Articles | Engaging | Greene on... | more by Mark Greene

My first encounter with the now extremely famous Harry Potter was swifter than a lizard's lick.

I had gone out in search of a gift for my god-daughter and found myself, as I often do on such occasions, in a place filled with treasures and glossy delights, in an Aladdin's cave in my very own high street - in short, my local bookshop.