West Baptist Church

Here’s a Brooke Fraser song, ‘Here’s to You’ that seems a fitting salute to 2010 with its ups and downs. It’s a jaunty one from her recent album, Flags. What’s the line you are most grabbed by? Cheers to the furrows on our brow To each hard-won victory Cheers to the losses that grew us […]

‘Tis the season to be Adventy! On Sunday we celebrated the beginning of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas where we get ourselves ready to welcome Jesus again, as ‘God became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood’ (John 1:14, the Message). On Saturday James, Carol, Matt and I spent a day at Northpoint […]

In most of Africa, one in every 13 pregnant women dies in childbirth. In New Zealand it’s one in about 4,000 women. Around the developing world, ten million kids die before their fifth birthday each year, and a sixth of those die because of diarrhoea from dirty drinking water and the lack of a toilet. […]

17 October 2010 Dear Mr Key, As you know, New Zealand has agreed to support the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to significantly reduce global poverty. In order to reach these crucial goals, we committed in 2000 to giving 0.7 per cent of gross national income in aid by 2015. I am writing to urge […]

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. […]

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 […]

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: […]

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 […]

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 […]