It was on Monday afternoon when I was desperately trying to come up with an idea for the Christmas talk at our CAMEO Christmas Lunch for seniors that an observation from Mike Reeves’ book Christ our Life came to mind. He notes that because the world is made through Christ all the best stories in […]
Last Sunday I was preaching down at Crofton Baptist Church in the morning service and then was interviewed on the subject of same sex attraction over lunch. I found the day immensely encouraging, especially meeting the pastor there who is a son of a former pastor of the church here. The recording for the interview […]
One of the things I enjoy doing most is preaching less familiar books of the Bible. Often this enables people to encounter God in a fresh way as they hear words that they have not heard before. Preaching Song of Songs over the year has given me that experience and the more recent joy has […]
Last Monday evening saw me 1800m above sea level in a hotel on top of an Alpine mountain speaking at the final of sixteen sessions on Oak Hall’s Alpine Bible School. Truth be told I was feeling somewhat emotional as before the talk I said this- “To teach the Word of God to those hungry […]
In lots of ways we have had a really encouraging couple of years as a church. We have had more baptisms in the past two years than any of us can remember and we have grown in our membership and congregation on a Sunday. Particularly on a Sunday morning in school term time there is […]
I simply can’t recall a time when the political world has seemed so crazy. Life has quietened down somewhat since the referendum result but there is still a huge amount of uncertainty about the future make-up of Great Britain, the relationship with the rest of Europe and whether one of our main political parties will […]
I’ve been reading through the first few chapters of 1 Kings recently. The theme of 1 Kings 6-7 is the building of the temple- you have a long list of measurements in chapter six and, after a brief interlude to describe the building of the palace, a significant section on the temple furniture in chapter […]
In the last two posts I have argued that, despite the difficulties of handling the text, we need to read and preach Song of Songs more. We live in a culture where there is much talk about love and the song gives us an opportunity to speak about a love which is as strong as […]
So what do you discover if you do read or preach Song of Songs? You learn about a love that is as strong as death and burns like a blazing fire (8:6). Instinctively when we read that I think we know that is true- love is the force that moves us and motivates us most […]
I first preached Song of Songs by accident. A few years ago I was asked to speak on Oak Hall’s Alpine Bible School. The print deadline for their brochure was coming up so I had about twenty minutes to work out what I wanted to do 16 sessions on. I had recently done Job and […]