West Baptist Church

When thinking about the issue of crisis pregnancy, we could spend all our time on trying to find the exact moment when a collection of human cells becomes a human person.  When does a small human being start to bear God’s image and deserve protection and hospitality? Or we could instead ask what Christian hospitality […]

From all of us at West, a huge welcome to Deanna Weir (Dee), our new Family Mentor! Change the world, one family at a time.  For the last eighteen months, the church and West Baptist Community Trust have been preparing for this. We have observed that there are a lot of isolated, struggling people in […]

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 […]

Check out the guys Movember Men efforts…

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 […]

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, […]

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 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 […]

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 are numbers 1 and 2, the things I am most grateful for in 2009 at West. #1 Shelter, Faith, Laughter Our identity as ‘a place of shelter, faith and laughter’ has […]

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 […]