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 [...]

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 [...]

One of my great hopes for West is that this period of Unplugging from screen-based entertainment will give us space to Plug In to God – maybe Plug back In to God.
So often we say to ourselves and each other that we don’t ‘have time’ for things we say are important to us.  I said [...]

I’ve said before that my Mum is my hero when it comes to giving people ‘the benefit of the doubt’, thinking the best of people rather than the worst.
Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Lacuna, has reminded me why my Mum’s attitude is so important.  The theme of the book is that ‘the most important thing about [...]

“Fear is always with us: that we are not good enough or strong enough, and so will fail; that we will be hurt.  Fear that what we love will be taken from us.  Fear of dying, even fear of God, or of no God.  But God surprises us by giving us strength to bear what [...]

Through a combination of laziness and love of Christmas decorations, one year we had our tinsel up until September the following year…
One European tradition is to take down Christmas decorations at Epiphany, 6 January, the day we celebrate the visit of the wise men to Jesus’ family in Bethlehem.  (If you missed Simon’s excellent narrative [...]

In their book First Things First Stephen R Covey, A Roger Merrill and Rebecca R Merrill tell a story that has become part of our life at West.  We’ve done the rocks-in-the-jar demo several times since January 2009 and it has become a significant image for lots of us.

If you don’t know what this is [...]

Heavens to Murgatroyd, Christmas Day was fun!
I forgot to say, unfortunately, that the mad, mad nativity play we enjoyed was of course adapted from Nicholas Allan’s masterpiece of a picture book, Jesus’ Christmas Party, which we read last Advent (without the French accent we were treated to on Friday!).
Thank you to all the good-humoured ‘volunteers’ [...]