What’s New

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 Many of those images of servants are largely outdated today (or are they?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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Christmas Eve – Minister’s Message

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.

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Carol Service – Minister’s Message

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!).

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Minister’s Message – December 7, 2025

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.

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Minister’s Message – November 23, 2025

Bible reading: Psalm 46.

Message.

Wales is justly proud of its castles, and there are a lot of them! For instance, we have Caerphilly, Chepstow, Caernarfon, Criccieth, Caldicot and our own Cardiff castle: that’s just a few, all beginning with the same letter, and there’s the rest of the alphabet to go!

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Christmas Market – November 22nd, 11am – 1pm

Select and buy some lovely handmade Christmas gifts, get festive with a glass of mulled wine, a turkey roll or hotdog and check out our other goodies on sale. Stalls include cakes, toys, books, jams and pickles, Christmas goodies. There’s also a raffle, various games and a tombola.

Minister’s Message – November 2, 2025

Reading: from Wisdom of Solomon 3.

This reading comes from the Apocrypha, written between the Old and New Testaments. It is not generally considered to have the same status as the rest of the Bible, but does reflect Jewish thinking of the time.

Message.

Some years ago, when I was in London, I received a call from the local Catholic priest. He was looking for help as a Funeral Company had asked him if he could put on a service for everyone they’d dealt with who’d lost loved ones during the previous year. The priest wasn’t sure if he wanted to do this, as it seemed a bit “commercial”, but realised that it might give some comfort to people who were still feeling their loss; so he agreed. He felt quite strongly that the service, which would take place on a Sunday afternoon, should be ecumenical; so he invited an Anglican vicar and myself, as a nonconformist, to help him out.

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