Weekly reflections

Sunday to Sunday, 28 Feb to 7 March Dear Friends, It will take a while to process all that happened last weekend! As most of you know, there was a Special Assembly of the Baptist churches of NSW and ACT to discuss motions that had been brought by five members churches; Campbelltown, Castle Hill, Chatswood, Newtown and Wollongong. The wording of the motions changed in the days leading up to Saturday (and changed again on the day) but what was Read more

Dear Friends, It was so lovely last Sunday to welcome Cecelia, Tara and Richard into membership and to hear how their faith journeys have brought them to Canberra Baptist Church. They told us beautiful stories of feeling welcomed and included; of their joy at finding a community that was passionate about the love and justice of God – a community that felt like they had come home.  As I reflected on the service, however, I was reminded of a story Read more

Dear friends Last Sunday was my penultimate morning service with you and my final opportunity to preach. I chose to speak on discipleship from the day’s Gospel reading — John 1:43-51. I said that “discipleship is about following Jesus and learning from him. It is about laying open our prejudices before him and being willing to deal with them. It is about embracing the possibility of transformation as Nathanael did.” This week we have SMAD with a couple of dozen Read more

Dear Friends, I love the passages we looked at last Sunday – Genesis 1:1-5 and Mark 1:4-11 – the image of the Spirit of God moving on the waters, the dove hovering over Jesus at his baptism, bringing light and hope and life out of the darkness and hopelessness and chaos of our world. In other words – the promise that the Holy Spirit is our helper. I don’t want to make assumptions about you, but thinking about my life, Read more

Dear CBC friends You all know the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, but do you know what the 12 days are? They are the 12 days from Christmas to 6 January, which is the twelfth day and known as Epiphany. Epiphany is one of the Christian church’s three principal and oldest festival days, the other two being Christmas and Easter. The term comes from the Greek word epiphanea, which means “manifestation”. In the Western church the festival primarily commemorates the Read more

Dear friends, Last Sunday was the final one before Advent. It is celebrated as Christ the King Sunday by many churches and we followed that tradition in our service. I spoke on The Shepherd King, suggesting that Jesus was the Good Shepherd and also the Messiah King, albeit in temporary disguise. I thought the final verse of our concluding hymn by Delores Dufner summed it up very aptly. You chose a humble human form and shunned the world’s renown; You Read more

Last Sunday John finished his message with one of my favourite songs, Brother, sister, let me serve you. It is a journeying song, which was appropriate as he was preaching on a journeying psalm, Psalm 123, a psalm the Israelites would have sung as they made their way to worship together in the temple in Jerusalem. In the same way, the words of that song have accompanied me throughout my life; from the heady days of beach mission where faith Read more