West Baptist Church

Prayers and Artwork by the kids

How on earth does a church integrate all ages into the faith community?  And should we? This is a hot topic around the country and around the world at the moment; at West we’ve been working hard at it for the last 17 years or so. If you’re curious, you might like to click on […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

This Sunday, all will be revealed.  Come along!

I’ve learned that the best time to think about any regular or annual event is straight after the last one, while the successes and lessons are fresh in your mind. I made awesome notes about next Advent and Christmas at West last December, for example, and now we have our good friend Robyn Mellar-Smith here […]