West Baptist Church

Isn’t it crazy that most of us are so concerned about how many years we will be left on this earth, when we are not even living sensitively in the time we have now?
-Robert Wicks, Seeds of Sensitivity, 50.
This morning we continued our 7 Sacred Days series with a focus on Dying Well.
Wise and thoughtful [...]

God be with the mother.  As she carried her child may she carry her soul. As her child was born, may she give birth and life and form to her own, higher truth.  As she nourished and protected her child, may she nourish and protect her inner life and her independence.  For her soul shall [...]

Martin Luther King Jr wrote this in Strength to Love:
We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women…. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge provided for us by a Pacific Islander.  We reach for soap that is created for us by a [...]

This is how I will finish my sermon on Sunday morning, so it’s a sneak preview if you’re in early, or will be ready as soon as you’re home from church, if you want to read it again for yourself.
It’s a reflection from a collection of Frederick Buechner’s writings, Listening To Your Life, p2:
I discovered [...]

What’s your favourite food?
Imagine biting into it, chewing it luxuriously, savouring the taste… mmm…
That’s what we did with Acts 3:1-10 on Sunday morning, in a version of the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina, ‘holy reading’, and it’s something you can do on your own, any day of the week.  Start by imagining broccoli or [...]

At Allan’s baptism the other week, I was thinking how one of the coolest things about the Church-with-a-capital-C is that we are part of a community that stretches throughout time and around the world.  We are not alone.
Tomorrow we have a chance to be reminded of that as many of us begin the E100 Bible [...]

Jocelyn is famous at West for her letter-writing.
When we spent a service in 2008 writing to Members of Parliament, in support the Millenium Development Goals, Jocelyn went home and wrote to eight more MPs, and got responses from them, too!
Well, she’s done it again, and we’re putting her letter on the blog so you can [...]

Who should pay for the enjoyment I get from chocolate?  Me, or a child working in slavery in Ghana, without adequate food or education?
That’s the question raised by global free trading practices, where God’s daughters and sons around the developing world are exploited to produce goods we in the West buy for low, low prices.
If [...]

Each year I write a ‘Pastor’s Top Five’ for our Annual Report.  This year I thought I’d serialise it on the blog, so here is number 4: one of the 5 things I am most grateful for in 2009 at West.
Don’t tell numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5, but this is [...]