This coming Sunday represents my last day as pastor at Woodstock Road Baptist Church. For those who have missed the news, from August I’ll be taking over the leadership of the South Central Ministry Training Course alongside my work with Living Out. I’ve been asked a few times how I am feeling. My honest answer […]
“How can we re-start better?” The last 18 months have seen a whole load of activities paused, not least within the church. That’s been difficult, but it has provided an opportunity to ask the question that we would never have considered but for the compulsory break- “Can we shape our church life in ways that […]
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 […]
I’m currently doing some work on Revelation 2-3 for an event that I am speaking at this summer. It is the section where Jesus addresses seven churches and speaks into their spiritual condition. Often we look at each of those churches in isolation. But as you put them together it is hard to escape one […]
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 […]
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 […]
I spent a fair chunk of February and early March announcing that disaster was on the way. This wasn’t special insight- the pandemic was as much of a suprise to me as the next person. But in the early part of the year as a church we considered the first few chapters of Jeremiah- looking […]
A couple of weeks ago I was able to stay with my parents. Because I live on my own, the Government’s support bubble system kicked in and I was allowed to visit them. As I did so, I was very conscious of those who were not in the same position. At that point those living […]