Who is Andy Burrows?

My name is Andy Burrows. I’m British, living in England, married to Heidi, and a father of four. I’m an accountant by training, and have had a long career in senior Finance roles, as well as an independent consultant helping companies with financial and business management projects.

I grew up in the North of England, and was raised in a Christian home, and came to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ during my childhood. I have read and studied the Bible, but never done any theology exams. After graduating from university I moved down South to Hampshire, where I did my accountancy training.

I started blogging in 2009 originally partly as an experiment (I was starting up my consulting/coaching business and did it because someone said it was a good idea and would be easier than I thought!), and partly to “give something back”. In my first  or second blog post, I wrote:

“Perhaps my purpose in life is not to be personally significant. Perhaps my purpose in life is 100,000 small encouragements to my children, my family, my friends, my colleagues and clients, [and] people I meet. And so I recall that the second way of summing up our human responsibility before God is, ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ My experiences, my personality, my brain, my personal reflections, my learning – they have all been given to me for a reason. And so, having accumulated all that… it’s probably time to try and consciously give something back by passing on little insights and tips, and simply by sharing some experiences.”

What is this Website for?

Life has not been straightforward for me. Even before 2009 when I started blogging, I’d suffered three redundancies and four major periods out of work. Then to add to that, ironically, 2009 saw the beginning of a struggle with cancer that continues to the present day.

And I tend to think deeply, practically, theologically and philosophically.

The result is an earnest desire to help others who struggle with the practical, theological and philosophical issues I’ve struggled with in my life.

I’m not sure I’ll ever quite understand how I fit into the world in terms of what it is I’m supposed contribute. No one has asked me to do any of this writing. I just feel that I should be sharing the experiences and insights I’ve been given. And creating my own website does not mean I think I’m anything special. Quite the opposite – I have a feeling that sometimes my reflections are more helpful to other people because they come from someone who is just an ordinary middle-aged, Christian family man.

So I simply continue pray, as I did when I started my first blogs, that all my thoughts, reflections, advice and insights may be glorifying to God, and will be helpful in some way to you, the reader.

What I Believe

I see the world as a human being primarily, and share the same experiences as other human beings. That’s probably a bizarre thing to start with, and pretty obvious. But I guess when I say that I also write, and see things, as a Christian, and from a Christian worldview, you have to understand that it doesn’t mean I experience things differently. Christians feel pain, joy, frustration, anxiety, fear, desire for success, desire for significance, temptations, tiredness, despondency, etc, just like anyone else. So when I share my experiences and feelings, I believe I’m sharing things that anyone in the world can understand, whatever their religious beliefs.

However, there are distinctively Christian responses to experiences. And being a Christian, I believe that faith in God is imperative.

Views on many subjects have varied among those who call themselves Christians, throughout history and across denominations. Especially when stumbling across writing on the internet, I think it’s useful therefore to have some idea where  writers stand in the main categories of thinking. If you know where they’re coming from you can judge whether to take their words as aligning with your own basic position or not. Reading from both a position of basic agreement and a position of fundamental disagreement can be helpful in many ways, but it’s more helpful if you know which you’re doing while you are reading!

So in terms of labels, I am theologically conservative. I am Protestant. I am a member of a congregation within the Church of England. I believe the Bible to be God’s infallible, inerrant, Word, which makes me evangelical. The Bible is the sole authority when it comes to belief about God and knowing how to live in tune with our belief in God. However, the Bible is not mainly written as a set of theological statements. Historically, when believers have attempted to write down theological statements, these have been called “articles” of faith, or a “confession of faith”, and normally these are based on an interpretation of the Bible. Those closest to my own views are the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the 39 Articles of the Church of England (1571). That means you could also call me a Calvinist, Reformed or Conservative Evangelical.

I resonate most, these days, theologically, with the writings of people like John PiperD.A. CarsonJim Packer, Paul TrippTim Keller, and Tim Chester.  The Gospel Coalition and Desiring God Ministries are both communities I have found helpful, and am broadly in agreement with. However, I’m also a “young earth” Creationist, and I find Ken Ham helpful. I’ve also found Greg Bahnsen helpful in thinking about apologetics, the defence of Christianity.

Other Internet Identities

You can find me elsewhere on the internet at the following places:

My business website – superchargedfinance.com

My LinkedIn profile – www.linkedin.com/in/andrewburrows/

My twitter profile – @andrewburrows10

Copyright

Copyright for all works published on this website remains with Andrew Burrows, except where explicitly attributed to other writers. Articles may be shared and republished freely as long as the content is not provided to the end-reader at a cost. Please contact me if you wish to include any of my writing in a non-free work. If republishing, please always provide a link back to this website with the following attribution:

“By Andy Burrows. Andy Burrows is a freelance writer and blogger, who lives in Hampshire, England, with his wife, Heidi and four children.”