A young lady poked her head round the door of my office at the church and asked if she could have a word with me. I had never met her before – she came along to our Parents and Toddlers Group, and she wasn’t a ‘regular church goer’ she informed me – but she wanted […]

The British Ambassador was in Washington some years back. About fortnight before Christmas a local TV station rang him. ‘Ambassador’ said caller, ‘What would you like for Christmas?’ ‘I shouldn’t dream of accepting anything’ replied the Ambassador. ‘Seriously, we would like to know’ responded the caller, ‘and don’t be stuffy … you have, after all, […]

Very early one Christmas morning a small boy tiptoed downstairs. All night he had been dreaming of the gorgeously decorated Christmas tree groaning under the weight of presents. Imagine his shocked amazement at seeing none these things – just the same old furniture arranged in the same drab way. Yet there was a difference, an […]

Do you have a Christmas tree up somewhere in your house at Christmas? Of course, you do! But … what do you have on the top of your Christmas tree?  Is it a star, or an angel, or a fairy?  This is a very important question?  As a child, we always had a Christmas tree […]

There is a painting by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder called The Numbering in Bethlehem.  It is typical of Bruegel’s work – the picture is full of people.  The scene depicts the census which took place in Bethlehem at the time when Jesus was born.  In one corner, there is a frozen […]

Advent is that season at the beginning of the Christian Year when traditionally the Church prepares itself for ‘Christmas’ or ‘Christ’s Mass’ – the annual celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. In this birth, we see God revealing himself to us in the Person of Jesus Christ. During this Advent Season we are seeking, […]

Back in the day some graffiti appeared on the wall of a certain theological college in south London. It read as follows: ‘Jesus said to them, “Who do you say that I am?” They replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, in which kerygma we find the ultimate meaning of […]

Alan Stillitoe’s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the story of the adventures of Arthur Seaton, a somewhat wild and irresponsible 21 year old living in Nottingham in the late 1950s? Our Saturday night and Sunday morning during our short holiday in Larnaca is not so controversial but quite exciting nevertheless in its own […]

  We are off to sunny Cyprus for eight days holiday. We are going back to the seaside town of Larnaca where we first enjoyed a short break in 2007. We have been back to Cyprus since then … part of a church trip when we were at Beckenham Baptist Church following in the footsteps […]

‘What a funny little church?’ said the nice new lady to me one Sunday morning recently as I greeted her on the steps of our chapel on her way in to worship. She meant the building of course, not the people? Actually, she really likes the people. This was her second Sunday with us and […]