West Baptist Church

Oh, Christchurch. Oh, Japan. Brooke Fraser sings in her new song ‘Flags’: I don’t know why the innocents fall While the monsters still stand And our lives blow about Like flags on the land And we don’t know either. Why has a five-month-old baby with his life before him been crushed by a falling ceiling? […]

The Christchurch earthquake was “not an act of God”, it was just “the Earth doing what it does”. These are great words from the Dean of Christchurch Cathedral, Peter Beck. He said to 3 News, “For me as a Christian, the act of God is in the love and compassion that people are sharing among […]

(‘Light’ by xkcd.com) Eternal God, shepherd of your people, we feel the fleeting passage of life, and we know how fragile is our existence on this tiny planet amid the spinning galaxies. We confess with the prophet: “All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers […]

Why do bad things happen to good people? This might be the most-asked theological question in the world, and you’ve probably asked a variant of it yourself at some point. This week we start a short series on the ‘minor’ prophets, the short books at the end of the Old Testament. We begin with Habakkuk […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 3: one of the 5 things I am most grateful for in 2009 at West. #3 Head meets Heart meets Hands It’s still a huge buzz for me that […]

I really enjoyed being back at the lectern last Sunday.  (I hope I wasn’t the only one!)  It was a great feeling to read from one of my favourite parts of the Bible, Romans 12 and try to help us all to be better equipped to support each other in times of lament. I’d be […]