West Baptist Church

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 [...]

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 [...]

One of the best things about unplugging from screens is that you can enjoy listening to great stuff while doing something else fun or productive.  I am in love with Radio New Zealand, and get heaps of their programmes as podcasts that I can listen to whenever I’m doing dishes or folding clothes or whatever.
Last [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

While we’re all unplugging from screen-based entertainment this Lent, we have a great opportunity to plug into the life of Jesus, particularly in the biographies of him we have in the Gospels.
Last Lent we spent most of our time in Luke’s Gospel, looking at Jesus used instances of hospitality to transform people and relationships.  This [...]

If there are children in your life, you might like to make use of the Lent activity ideas at The Modern Sacred Family site.
Maybe you could use Lent as an opportunity to rediscover classic children’s books? Wikipedia (of course!) has a list of older ones, and I found this list of more recent ones [...]

One of the coolest things about our Lent project to Unplug (from screen-based entertaintment) and Plug In (to real life) is that it’s a collaboration with our friends at Northpoint and Central Baptist.
And one of the coolest things about that is that each church gets the benefit of resources in the other.  Our friend Robyn [...]

It’s day 4 of our collective fasting from screen-based entertainment.  How’s it going at your place?
So far Matt and I have taught each other our childhood card games (it’s all part of cross-cultural understanding) and gone to the high energy Hospice fundraiser, Grease (more about the unsuitability of this adult musical for children later, perhaps…).
Hester [...]