2009

One of the perks of being the minister of a church for almost 22 years is that I get to see people I have baptised as infants becoming young adults.  It is the same if they have come later into more»

A couple of Sundays ago, the children from the Sunday school presented a nativity play with a twist.  Entitled “Matt and Lucy’s Version Birth”, it was not so much a nativity more»

 We’re already too late for it to happen, but we’ll sing it anyway.  There’s only fifteen days left until Christmas, not nearly enough time to do everything that needs to more»

"There's got to be more to life," someone said, "than getting married and having children and raising them to the point where they look at you and say 'There's got to be more to life more»

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A woman in my second parish thirty years ago commented after a baptism service that where she grew up, I might have been arrested and sent to a slave labour camp for baptising a baby, and so might more»

The flyer arrived in my email inbox on Thursday.  “One Generation from Extinction” proclaimed the email subject line and the bold heading on the flyer itself.  It was an more»

In ancient, as in many contemporary Middle Eastern societies, women were way down the pecking order.  Their personal significance and economic security depended upon the male they were attached more»

All Saints DayThere is a prayer we have used every St Lukes Day service that I have led since 1988.  You may remember us using it a couple of weeks ago.  Part of it goes like this:  more»

(The baptism of Christina Elizabeth Hayward Wright)Dear ChristinaWelcome to the Christian family!Today you were baptised with water using the ancient formula, “In the name of the Father, and of more»

If you have ever wondered what post-modernism is, and would you recognise it if you saw it, then perhaps this evening’s service is a good case in point.  Here we have a Presbyterian parish more»

Next Saturday morning during “The Journey of a Vision”, a number of people who were involved at the time will be sharing their perspectives on the St Lukes story over the past 25 years more»

 It has been a particularly shocking week in our neighbourhood on this planet.  Severe flooding in the Philippines and Vietnam began the week’s catalogue of woes.  Then the more»

 In a Bible full of male prophets and priests, military leaders and kings, it’s refreshing to have a courageous heroine at the centre of a story.  Of course, male commentators down more»

 On the 23rd day of the month of Payni, in the 29th year of the reign of Caesar Augustus – or, in our chronology, on the 18th of June in the year 1 BCE –  an Egyptian worker more»

Do you remember?  Do you remember what it was like to be in love?  To be in love with someone was – well, perhaps I should say is rather than was, not ruling out the possibility that more»

 Some weeks ago I went to visit a member of our community in hospital.  She was in the intensive care ward, and so I fronted up to the ward and rang the door bell as the instructions more»

 One of the intriguing things about St Lukes is that no one, to my knowledge anyway, has raised any objection to the different uses to which we have put the church building over the last ten more»

 I had a great weekend at the centennial celebrations for Knox College in Dunedin, last weekend.  Knox College isn’t to be confused with the institution that trains Presbyterian more»

 I AMThe simple words “I am” can be one of the most profound statements.  In the Hebrew scriptures, God says “I am”, simply by itself – I am, before anything more»