Category: St A’s Messenger Articles

About 18 months ago, I read a compelling article about a new type of cycle helmet: the Abus Kranium. You might well be wondering what is so special about this helmet – please, allow me to tell you… A ‘normal’ cycle helmet gives a little protection if you’re unfortunate enough to be involved in a collision. The various statistics and… Read more →

Being a Baptist minister is a lovely thing. And I could fill a few dozen Messenger articles listing the reasons why I believe this. The Lord has blessed me in many different ways since my ordination. This month, I’d like to reflect on just one of these many blessings: hearing words of Godly wisdom. For much of my working week,… Read more →

In this month’s little letter, I’d like to begin by sharing a passage from a book. The book in question is called, The Church – its polity and ordinances and it was written in 1879 by Hezekiah Harvey. It’s a riveting read! The chapter that I’m sampling deals with the fundamentals of what it means to be part of a… Read more →

Soon after I became a Christian, I was taught to make a daily commitment to praying ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ – the wonderful words of Matthew 6:9-13. I used the prayer to start or end more expansive prayers. I would employ lists to remind me of what I should be thankful for, what I should be praying about and whom I… Read more →

Earlier in the year the designer Clemens Habicht produced 1000 COLOURS – a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. It is credited with being the most difficult jigsaw puzzle in the world. The puzzle has edges and corners, just like the jigsaws we all know and love. However, there’s no picture on the box of a fluffy dog, Swiss chalet or steam… Read more →

Back in 1910 a man called George Gibson Polley made an unusual bet with a big group of people. He bet them a considerable sum of cash that he could climb, unaided, up the outside of a huge department store in Chicago. An enormous crowd gathered as he made his ascent – most felt certain that he would fall to… Read more →

It has been a joy studying the Gospel of Luke for the last few weeks. Luke wrote a great deal and, as you might expect with such a vast resource of Divinely inspired words, many stunning messages are inevitably left ‘un-preached’. I felt a little daring doing twenty-plus sermons and two full ‘terms’ on Luke. I wonder how people would… Read more →

The festive season is upon us, once again. It seems amazing to me that a whole year has gone by since Eileen emailed me in Norwich and asked me to write my first ‘little something’ for the Christmas edition of The Messenger. And what a year this has been! Every close member of my family has embarked on a new… Read more →

When I was a young boy, I used to attend the church of St Peter and St Paul in Wantage, Oxfordshire. This particular church was a bastion of the ‘Oxford Movement’. It was, and might well still be, an example of the highest of High Church Anglicanism. During the six years that I attended, I developed love for hymn number… Read more →

Jesus taught that we should not necessarily conform to the practices and patterns of the world around us. For example, the Disciples were challenged by Jesus to question their ambitions and act with ever-greater humility. He emphasised that they should seek to serve one another, rather than be served (e.g. Mark 11:42-45). The instruction was often ignored. Even at the… Read more →