West Baptist Church

On Sunday we took the time to say thank you to Dee for her time with us as Family Mentoring Coordinator in the pilot project.  Due to being unable to secure ongoing funding for the role, the West Baptist Community Trust has found it necessary to bring the pilot to a close. Dee was acknowledged […]

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Dee’s commissioning – Sun 17 Jul 2011 [Audio clip: view full post to listen] To download the audio, right-click this link and save the file

A few years ago, if you had said to me that I would be a church curator, I would have said, never- no way!  Things change and now I consider it an important part of my life. I say “important” rather than “fun” and I still get nervous; and afterwards I always feel that “I […]

This morning we had some help from the master painter, Rembrandt van Rijn, in hearing God. His painting of the events of Luke 2:22-38 is sometimes called ‘Simeon and Anna Recognise the Lord in Jesus’ (most other famous paintings of the scene are called the much less insightful ‘The Presentation at the Temple’, also this […]

‘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 […]

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 […]

‘Whether your relationship is strong, or you are struggling,’ is what our advertising will say when we go to the printer this week.  The Marriage and Relationship Course we’re running with Northpoint is for any couple who wants to invest in their marriage in a comfortable, non-threatening way. You don’t have to talk to anyone […]

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 […]

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 my favourite!  Especially […]