We have had a couple of events this week where we have taken the opportunity to look back with thanksgiving on the past year. You can listen to my brief reflection on the evening of New Year’s Eve here. But I wanted to note a few highlights from the year here in the hope that […]
As well as building up to Christmas this is the time of the year when we nostalgically look back on the past twelve months. We had our staff team Christmas lunch a couple of weeks back and reflected back on the past year. I came up with some highlights such as baptisms whilst my colleagues […]
I know most blogs at the moment should be about Donald Trump but I’ve written all I want to on that subject here. I want to write about something different because, whilst Governments do their thing, the church is involved in a Kingdom that will last forever. It could, therefore, be argued from an eternal […]
It is interesting to see which of the blogs that I write receive most feedback. Sadly from my perspective the accounts of various historical figures seem to attract relatively little! However, my post from a few weeks back- “Busy and Lifeless” has resulted in various conversations. In it I noted that a significant number of […]
Over the last few months I have had the same conversation several times. Sometimes I have been the one listening and sometimes the one speaking. The conversation involves somebody who is active in church- perhaps a pastor, an elder or a youth leader. They are doing good stuff- preaching sermons, seeing Christians grow or trying […]
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’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 […]
I wrote last week about the many things for which we could give thanks as a church over the last year. So what have we got planned for 2016? The first week of January sees our week of prayer. We saw so many answers to prayer from the equivalent week last year. Any encouragements that […]
At our Carol Service this year I reflected on those end of year montages that you often see on TV programmes at this time of year. I am a bit of a sucker for them and I particularly enjoyed those on the Sports Personality of the Year programme that I caught up with subsequent to […]
Last week I wrote up some reflections on the couple of weeks I had speaking at the Oak Hall Alpine Bible School on Romans and a CU houseparty on 2 Corinthians. My chief reflection was simply the power to transform lives evident in the doctrine of the righteousness of God received by faith. However, there […]