Minister’s Message – March 15, 2026

Bible reading: John 19:25-27.

Message.

There are several church services or celebrations which seem to have been around for ever, but in fact haven’t been. Take Harvest Festivals, for example: although celebrations to mark the end of harvest go back to the Middle Ages or earlier, they were secular and rowdy affairs. It was only in 1843 that Robert Hawker, the Vicar of Morwenstow in Cornwall, held the first modern Harvest Thanksgiving service in church. Life on the farms back then was tough and unpredictable, but that year’s harvest was exceptionally good. As the villagers were getting ready for their usual drunken party Hawker stepped in and asked, “So who do you think gave you the harvest?” He then led a service thanking God for harvest blessings. The idea soon caught on (I suspect that Victorian romanticism in face of the Industrial Revolution had something to do with that) and churches have celebrated harvest ever since.

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Minister’s Message – March 8 – International Women’s Day

Bible reading: Genesis 2:7-9, 15-24.

Message.

Back in the 1950s, the American suburban housewife was said to be the envy of women around the world. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, and concerned only about her husband, her children and her home. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to a man in his world. She was free to choose her clothes, her car, her labour-saving appliances; in short, she had everything that women had ever dreamed of and had little thought for the nasty and unfeminine problems that existed outside their home.

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Minister’s Message on St. David’s Day

Bible reading: from Psalm 33.

Shout for joy for what the Lord has done,
all you that are righteous;
praise him, all you that obey him.
Give thanks to the Lord with harps,
sing to him with stringed instruments.
Sing a new song to him,
play the harp with skill, and shout for joy!
the words of the Lord are true,
and all his works are dependable.
The Lord loves what is righteous and just;
his constant love fills the earth.
Worship the Lord, all the earth!
Honour him, all peoples of the world!
When he spoke, the world was created;
at his command everything appeared.
The Lord frustrates the purposes of the nations;
he keeps them from carrying out their plans.
But his plans endure forever;
his purposes last eternally.
Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord;
happy are the people he has chosen for his own!

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An evening of Welsh entertainment – February 28th

Join us for an evening of music and drama celebrating Welsh culture and heritage at 7pm on Saturday, February 28th.  Cheese and wine will be served. There is no set ticket charge, just donations. If you are planning to attend, please email tickets@christchurchunitedcardiff.org.uk – this will help with catering and seating plans. Thank you.

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Pancake Afternoon – February 17th

Join us for our Pancake Afternoon on Shrove Tuesday, February 17th. Pancakes served from 2pm onwards. No booking required.  A warm welcome to everyone.

Minister’s Message – February 8, 2026

Bible reading: Matthew 5:1-16.

Message.

“Mary is reliable, trustworthy, and straightforward; in fact she’s the salt of the Earth”. What sort of image would flash up in your mind if you heard someone saying that? For me, it would be an old-fashioned picture of a hard-working woman who lived in a terraced house in an industrial city, rising early each morning to stoke the fire, get her husband’s breakfast, then cleaning, washing, shopping and scrubbing the front step until it gleamed. She’d be middle-aged but beginning to look a bit weary, dressed neatly but plainly; she’d also be honest and plain-speaking. And if you think that picture makes me sound a bit snobbish or condescending, you’d be absolutely correct, because one dictionary definition of “salt of the earth” says that it’s used mainly by upper-class people when they are talking about working-class folk whom they consider good but rather rough-and-ready. It probably says more about the speaker than the person they’re describing!

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Minister’s Message – January 25, 2026

Bible reading: Acts 9:1-20.

Message.

I doubt that any of us recognise the names of Wesley Beynon and Mark Wilding. Indeed, their picture makes me think that they’re probably “not my kind of people”. But, about ten days ago, these two men – who are uncle and nephew and come from Merthyr Tydfil – did something truly amazing; you may have heard about it on the news. As they were driving along the Heads of the Valleys road, they saw that a car was on fire. They also saw a distraught young woman beside it, screaming that her baby was trapped inside. Without a moment’s hesitation the two men forced their way in through the flames and rescued the child. Afterwards they said, “We were in the right place at the right time. Instinct took over. We’d never have left the scene until the baby was safely out of the car”. Would we have had their courage? I doubt it, and I hope they receive medals for what they did. Nevertheless they will remain largely unsung heroes.

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Minister’s Message – January 18, 2026

Bible reading: Isaiah 49:1-7.

Message.

Most of you know that, before I became a Baptist minister, I was a missionary in West Africa. I actually don’t often use that word these days but prefer to say “church worker”. That’s because, for many folk, the word “missionary” has connotations of colonialism and Empire, of white Europeans and Americans assuming without question that their culture was superior to those of other people, of destroying age-old traditions and practices in the name of progress, of aggressively evangelising while ignoring peoples’ physical needs, and more. Some of those criticisms are justified, but not always; for instance it was often missionaries who spoke up for local people against the oppression of their Imperial masters. In any case, it was due to the valiant and – yes – courageous efforts of unnumbered servants of God, with all their faults and prejudices, that has given us the worldwide Church of today. Indeed, the churches in countries such as Nigeria, South Korea and Brazil are now sending their own missionaries to heathen Britain!

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Minister’s Message- January 11, 2026

Bible reading: Isaiah 42:1-9.

Message.

I wonder what pictures come into your mind when you hear the word “servant”? Perhaps it’s some teenage skivvy working in a great house, up before dawn to set the fires going and sleeping in a cramped, cold attic bedroom. Perhaps it’s a parlourmaid, dressed in a black dress and a white pinafore, meekly bringing tea and cakes to the mistress of the house and her friends. Perhaps it’s a rather lordly butler – who today we might give the title of “house manager” – standing in the shadows to ensure that all runs smoothly during a great dinner party. Perhaps it’s a “man’s man”, like Bertie Wooster’s Jeeves, a confidante as much as an employee (and quite possibly more intelligent). At the other end of the social scale, a servant might simply be a maid-of-all-work who worked alone in a middle-class household. Many of those images of servants are largely outdated today (or are they? – the rich still have their staff); but we may also think of Civil Servants, ranging from humble clerks to high-ranking officials at the heart of Government – presumably their calling is to serve the nation and its people.

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Minister’s Message – January 4, 2026

Bible reading: Isaiah 60:1-7.

Message.

I don’t know how many people today read the books by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I suspect that most folk know of them: “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, “Kidnapped” and of course “Treasure Island”. However being an author was not the career RLS’s parents would have chosen for him; they would have preferred him to have been a civil engineer more specifically, a builder of lighthouses.

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