West Baptist Church

I’ve been quite sick this week, and found it hard to do justice to the texts we looked at today.  Lucky for all of us, what the Holy Spirit chooses to do with preaching seems to be pretty independent of its ‘quality’!  If anyone would like to think further about what we discussed today, I [...]

Unplugging is particularly hard if you live by yourself.
Other people are great sources of alternative entertainment – you can play games with them (or play tricks on them, I suppose), have relaxed chats, do some cooking or a jigsaw, eat dinner together with some great music playing, and if you live with other people, you [...]

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 3: one of the 5 things I am most grateful for in 2009 at West.
#3 Head meets Heart meets Hands
It’s still a huge buzz for me that I [...]

I reckon one of the best things about Taranaki, right up there with the mountain and the windwand, is that we have our Anniversary Day holiday in March – right when you need a wee break, right?
It’s become West tradition to go camping at Oakura over the long weekend.  You can view some photos of [...]

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 are numbers 1 and 2, the things I am most grateful for in 2009 at West.
#1 Shelter, Faith, Laughter
Our identity as ‘a place of shelter, faith and laughter’ has come to [...]

Ruby Duncan is a provocative thinker and local hero.  She’s lived in New Zealand, Australia and the slums of Manila, and is now the head of Iosis, the family support service of the Baptist Union in Aotearoa.  
I mention this because she was invited to speak at Parachute this year as part of a [...]

“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 [...]

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’ [...]