I went for a walk a couple of weeks ago. Truth be told, I was in a foul mood. I was preparing for the following week’s Sunday morning service and, being honest, the thought of having to announce once more “Let’s try to engage with this song as others sing it,” and “Please limit the […]
How do you imagine God? For all of us the danger is that the God we have in our minds is different to the God who is really there. Truth be told, that’s true all the time. I remember a comment from Julian Hardyman in a sermon- “None of us have ever had an adequate […]
A few weeks ago I was thinking about the church in the autumn, hopefully when normality has returned. What should be our goal? Instinctively my mind went to programmes and activities. How could we look like a bustling and vibrant church? And then I reflected a bit. As I wrote last week, a reputation for […]
There are lessons to learn from the last year. Perhaps the most obvious is that as humans we are not in control. A tiny virus can stop the world in its tracks. That should give us a sense of humility before our Creator for He alone knows the future. Having said that, we are slow […]
Towards the end of his life John Stott, one of the great church leaders of the 20th century, said this: “I am sometimes asked whether at my age I have any ambitions left. I always now reply, “Yes, my overriding ambition is that I may become a little more like Christ.” God’s purpose is to […]
Let me be honest- I am decidedely fed up of lockdown. The way to get me muttering under my breath (or sometimes out loud) at the moment is to get somebody on TV telling us how essential it is to prolong restrictions even beyond the time when the vulnerable have been vaccinated. Lockdown is dehumanizing […]
In my last couple of posts I have suggested that lockdown is a time for us to see the importance of the inner life. In our sermon series in January we considered Jesus’ invitation to come to Him- and I know a number were struck by the image of drinking deeply of Jesus from John […]
On September 17th 1939 Martyn Lloyd-Jones- two weeks after war was announced- preached on Acts 16:25. Paul and Silas have been flogged and imprisoned in Philippi. And yet we read- “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.” Lloyd-Jones wrote to his wife […]
I have been very aware that the blog part of the website has looked rather dormant since September. That’s largely because 2020 has become, amongst other more important things, the year of the video. So let me flag up various resources over on our YouTube channel. In the autumn a number of our small fellowship […]
A couple of Saturday afternoons ago I sat down to watch the F.A.Cup Final. I’m not entirely sure why- given that it was between Arsenal and Chelsea I wanted both teams to lose. But shortly before the match that strange old tradition took place- the singing of Abide with Me. Except this year there was […]