Minister’s Message – Sunday June 13th, 2021

Ground Elder – otherwise known as Goutweed, English Masterwort, Bishop’s Weed or Snow-in-the-Mountain – is a plant that you really don’t want to have in your garden. True, its tender but pungent-tasting leaves are edible and were used during the Middle Ages as a spring vegetable, especially in soup. It has also been used to treat gout and arthritis, acts as a mild sedative and has a laxative effect. But ground elder, which can grow to a height of about a metre, is also a thug and a pest. For it grows from underground stems or rhizomes which spread through the soil, sucking the nutrients out of it. It spreads rapidly, crowding out other plants. And it is almost impossible to eradicate: you can try to dig it out but a new plant will grow from even the tiniest fragment of rhizome that’s left in the ground. In other words, it is a persistent and invasive species.

Minister’s Message – Sunday June 6th, 2021

“Does family come first?”   

The Christian Church generally regards families as a good thing, a foundational building block of a stable society. Indeed, some churches are keen to tell us that they “uphold family values and believe that healthy families make up a healthy Church” – although I suspect they have a very specific picture of what a family is like. There’s a Baptist church near Chicago which takes a commitment “to strengthen marriages and the family” as one of its “Core Values”. And even Pope Francis has said that one of the Church’s greatest challenges is to “defend the family from all ideological and individualistic assaults”.

Minister’s Message – Sunday May 30th, 2021

I wonder what you expect will happen when you come to church? You probably look forward to meeting friends and (in normal times) singing hymns; you will of course listen attentively to the sermon and join in with the prayers. By the end of the service you will hope to have been encouraged and enthused, ready to serve God for another week. But I doubt if you expect anything dramatic to happen, except perhaps someone being taken ill (which, sadly, does happen), the Minister knocking over the flowers or the video projector catching fire!

Minister’s Message – Sunday May 23rd, 2021

“The breath of God’s life”.   Travel has been very much in the news this week; and Portugal is about the only country in Europe on the Government’s “green” list. That means that people have been jetting off there since last Monday; I guess that most of them have been heading for the Algarve or possibly Lisbon. But there are many other places of interest in Portugal and one of these is the city of Évora, situated about 100 kilometres south of Lisbon. It features medieval city walls, a beautiful cathedral, an ancient University, and a well-preserved Roman temple. But, according to TripAdvisor, the most-visited “attraction” – if I may call it that – is the “Capela dos Ossos”, the 16^th century Chapel of Bones, situated in the basement of the Church of St. Francis.

Minister’s Message – Sunday May 16th, 2021

I wonder if you’ve ever come across the phrase “Succession planning”? It’s a business term, although I’m sure it could be applied to all sorts of organisations including music groups, schools, charities, political parties, even churches. What it is is a strategy for passing on leadership roles, or even a company’s ownership, to other people when its most important staff move, retire or – let’s be honest – die. Succession planning is particularly important for family businesses, partly because their founders often find it hard to let go of day-to-day management and partly because their death or retirement can provoke unseemly family squabbles – which is, I’m sure, the stuff of many a television drama!

Minister’s Message – Sunday May 9th, 2021

Loneliness can kill. That isn’t my opinion but is hard scientific fact: statistics show that it’s as deadly as smoking, is linked to an increased likelihood of developing coronary heart disease, strokes and high blood pressure, puts people at greater risk of dementia and – of course – can lead to depression and even suicide. The risk to health that it can bring is higher than obesity, physical inactivity or air pollution. It’s estimated that there are nine million lonely people in Britain, of whom nearly half are older people. So it’s good to know that there is now a “Campaign to End Loneliness” which says that people “need connections that matter” to sustain their mental and emotional health.

Minister’s Message – Sunday May 2nd, 2021

Many things in life seemed to be far simpler when I was growing up. You bought your electricity from the Electricity Company and your gas from the Gas Board. If you had a telephone – and many people didn’t – you paid your bills at the Post Office; mobile phones of course were the stuff of fiction. Unless you were well-off and could afford private education, your children went to the local school. If you had a television (and we didn’t for a long time) there were two channels to choose from: the BBC and “the other side”. Even on the wireless you could only select from the Light Programme, the Home Service and something mysterious called the Third Programme, although young people took their “tranny” under the bedclothes at night and secretly tuned into Radio Luxembourg or Voice of America! You bought your food at somewhere we just called “the shops”, and you could have any colour of car so long as it was black!