Last Sunday Julia and I should have been in France enjoying a short holiday in the French sunshine in the delightful historic town of Chinon where we had booked a wonderful apartment overlooking the chateau on one side and the river on the other. Unfortunately, due to President Macron, we had to cancel that holiday […]

In its heyday Abbey Baptist Church, Reading, where Julia is the Minister and I am the BOGOF, was responsible for planting somewhere in the region of 25 new churches in and around the Reading area. Last Sunday we visited Carey Baptist Church, planted by Abbey in 1867 on the western edge of the Reading of […]

Last Sunday, in the latest of our Sabbatical Sunday jaunts, we paid a visit to Carey Baptist Church in Reading. The church was founded in 1867, a plant from our own church, Abbey Baptist Church, and was named after William Carey, a famous Baptist missionary from Northamptonshire, who went to India in 1793, and who is still highly revered […]

Last Sunday, for our latest Sabbatical Sunday jaunt, Julia and I had a lovely day visiting Elvetham Heath near Fleet in Hampshire. In the morning we attended The Church on the Heath for their 11.00 a.m. All Together Worship Service, and afterwards we went to my daughter Caroline’s house for Sunday Lunch. Caroline and her […]

This weekend we are down in Ebbesbourne Wake in Wiltshire once again, visiting Julia’s 96-year-old mother, Olivia. Where to worship this coming Sunday? That is the question? We have to be back in Reading on Monday (although still on sabbatical, Julia has a couple of meetings in preparation for returning to work at the beginning […]

This weekend we are staying local once again and visiting our Parish Church, Trinity Church in Lower Earley, for our latest Sabbatical Sunday.  Established in the mid-1950s as a partnership between the Methodist, United Reformed and Anglican church, Trinity is situated next door to the large Asda Supermarket complex in Lower Earley and is therefore […]

After a few Sabbatical Sundays travelling various distances to visit various churches, last Sunday Julia and I stayed closer to home and visited All Nations Christian Centre right here in Reading. All Nations is an Elim Pentecostal Church, that lives up to its name with more than 30 nationalities gathering for worship together each week. […]

We are driving past Wimbledon Common, at silly o’clock on a Sunday morning, because the Church Service we are going to starts at 9.30 a.m. Perhaps it is because it is silly o’clock, or because we had a hilarious overnight stay at the Premier Inn, Chessington (involving a somewhat disastrous dinner and equally disappointing breakfast […]

‘Food, Glorious Food’, written by Lionel Bart, is the opening song from the 1960s West End and Broadway musical (and 1968 film) Oliver (based on the book Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, of course). The song is sung from the point of view of the children of a workhouse for orphans where they are forced […]

Last Sunday Julia and I made a nostalgic trip (for me anyway) back to Greenford, Middlesex, and specifically to my home church, Greenford Baptist Church – a church which has experienced a significant renaissance in recent years becoming a very diverse, lively, multicultural church in comparison to the somewhat traditional very ‘white’ church of my […]