Author Archives: tim

2021 Vision

This time last year, I was standing here telling you a couple of stories about tent pegs, and about how I felt that God might be encouraging us as a church to enlarge the place of our tent, to spread out, to lengthen the cords. I had no idea that this would mean enlarging out […]

Advent Waiting

A few weeks ago I arrived home from leading the Sunday service to find an email waiting for me. In the service we had sung “Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord.” and I had prayed using a phrase something like “we want to wait on You this morning, Lord”. The person who […]

Remembrance 2020

In the reading from John’s eye witness account of the good news of Jesus that Doug read for us earlier, we heard Jesus speaking to his disciples. The occasion is a meal, one of many that he would have shared with his friends, but this one was different. This is the last supper that Jesus […]

Sharing Faith

This morning the sermon is going to be a little bit different. Normally I spend most of the time talking about the passages and then make a couple of quick suggestions for how we might put them into practice. This morning it’s going to be the other way round. We’ve been exploring our church’s value […]

Being Accepting

I wonder if you’ve heard the one about the bride preparing for her wedding. She was anxious that she’d forget what order things would happen in during the service, particularly at the beginning when she would be in a bit of a daze. She talked to the vicar about this, and she calmed her down […]

Covid-19

So, we’re starting this term with a couple of sermons looking at big issues that have come up over the last six months or so. This week we’re thinking about Covid-19, and next week we’re going to look at Black Lives Matter, and the challenges of racial inequality. I know that some of you feel […]

Questions of Identity

When I was at theological college, we had preaching classes. In one of these, the lecturer showed us clips from four different films, each depicting the scene that we’ve read about this morning. So many film makers have given us their version of this story, ranging from Charlton Heston in the 10 Commandments all the […]

Laziness and Work

As I was thinking about this morning’s theme, and the ideas of laziness and diligence that we’re exploring today, I was aware of this real tension that we have to keep hold of as we’re talking about them. On the one hand we’ve got lots of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of laziness, […]

Envy and Compassion

This morning we’re continuing our series looking at heroes and villains in the Bible, and how their stories can help us root out vices in our lives, and to encourage virtues. Our heroes and villains today are some of the most well known in the whole of the Bible. Andrew Lloyd-Webber has helped popularise the […]

Lust and Love

I thought more than twice about changing the subject for this morning’s sermon. It’s difficult enough to speak about these things when I can see who I’m talking to, when I can get some clues about how it’s landing with people. When I know that we’ve got prayer ministry folk around who can come alongside […]