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 [...]

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 [...]

The mysterious maths of God, that God is Three and God is One, is what we celebrate and ruminate on each year on Trinity Sunday, the week after Pentecost.
Knowing that our Creator God made us in the image of the Three-in-One, on Trinity Sunday this year we asked God to speak to us through human [...]

This is the first in a series of E100 blog posts written by different people in our community.  To kick things off we have Will Mills, whose E100 journey you can follow more closely on his own blog, here.  Click on the text references below to see a copy of the biblical text Will is [...]

Tonight we extinguished seven candles, one by one, as we read through Matthew’s account of what happened 2000 years ago.  You could do the same at home, perhaps on Friday or Saturday evenings, so here are the readings, the shadows, and the artwork we reflected on tonight.
Matthew 26:36-46: The Shadow of Agony. The first candle is extinguished.

Praying [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Today we went ‘over and back’ to figure out what Jesus was on about when he announced that his followers were ’salt’ and ‘light’.
If you’d like some extra food for thought (perfectly seasoned!), download the excellent reflection from Robyn Lewis from Northpoint at the end of this post.  She’s also our special guest star speaker [...]