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Join us for our Pancake Afternoon on Shrove Tuesday, February 17th. Pancakes served from 2pm onwards. No booking required. A warm welcome to everyone.
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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!
Read more “Minister’s Message – February 8, 2026”
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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.
Read more “Minister’s Message – January 25, 2026”
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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!
Read more “Minister’s Message – January 18, 2026”
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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.
Read more “Minister’s Message- January 11, 2026”
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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.
Read more “Minister’s Message – January 4, 2026”
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Message.
There’s one phrase which comes again and again in the Christmas story, although it might not be the first to come to our minds when we think through it. That phrase is, “Don’t be afraid” (or, if you prefer, “Fear not”) and, if I’ve counted correctly, it comes four times, in fact nearly every time an angel, God’s messenger, turns up.
Read more “Christmas Eve – Minister’s Message”
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Message.
It seems as if I’ve was wrong about the shepherds. Perhaps you were, too. You see, I’d always thought of them as poor, unkempt, grubby and smelly – not the sort of people you’d want to have at your posh dinner party. And I’ve had good reason for thinking as I have: many scholars, over many decades, have said that shepherds in ancient Palestine were despised and dishonest people, ritually unclean according to Jewish religious law, outcasts from society who weren’t allowed to testify in a court trial. I’ve read that shepherds stood on the bottom rung of the social ladder, sharing the same lowly status as tax collectors and dung sweepers (that’s an interesting pairing!).
Read more “Carol Service – Minister’s Message”
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Bible Reading: Isaiah 11:1-9.
Message.
The film “Duck Soup”, made back in 1933, is a political farce about the small country of Freedonia which is on the verge of going bust. Salvation is at hand, in the shape of the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale. She is willing to provide the necessary finance, but with one condition: her personal agent, Rufus T. Firefly – played by Groucho Marx – must become Freedonia’s leader. Of course the next-door nation of Sylvania is busy plotting revolution and sends in its spies Chicolini and Pinky, played by Chico and Harpo Marx. Chaos inevitably ensues.
Read more “Minister’s Message – December 7, 2025”
Christchurch Players
The Wizard of Oz, as told by the Christchurch Players.
Read more “Pantomime Tickets”