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Minister’s Message – June 26, 2022

I wonder if you’ve ever heard of the Society of Ploughmen? – nor had I. It was founded in 1972 to organise the British National Ploughing Championships which attract over 250 competitors each year; it now also aims to encourage the art, skill and science of ploughing land, and runs training sessions to those who want to learn more. The Society actively encourages “New blood” – there is a Young Farmers Championship as well as the main one – and it’s pleased to say that the number of female members is on the rise; I think that, at some point, the Society will have to change its name!

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Minister’s Message – June 19, 2022

I knew my father for twenty years, until he died: he was aconstant presence throughout my childhood. He wasn’t into sport so we never attended football or cricket matches; however we did go to classical concerts and, when I was older, to the opera. He wasn’t very practical with his hands, either, but we tried – rather unsuccessfully – to build model aeroplanes and then – even less successfully – to fly them in the park across the road. Because he was a doctor, he seemed to take personal offence if either me or my sister was ill – until I was sent home from school with a raging bout of ‘flu that kept me in bed for several weeks. My father was generous, sometimes to my mother’s despair; he took a keen interest in everything I did although he never really understood how children ‘ticked’; we had the inevitable rows during my teenage years. In many ways he was an old-fashioned man, more nineteenth-century than twentieth; my biggest regret is that he died too soon for me to develop a proper adult relationship with him.

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Minister’s Message – May 29,2022

Back in 1935, a young portrait artist called Phyllis Pearsall was becoming frustrated. The cause of her frustration was simple: she needed to travel around London but the newest map she could find was 17 years old and out-of-date. So she had an idea – she decided to produce a new map which would cover the rapidly expanding area of London, one which wouldn’t just include streets but also bus routes and places of interest such as museums. There would, of course, be an alphabetical index; and there was one innovation: the map would include strategically-placed house numbers on main roads.

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Minister’s Message – May 22, 2022

As a boy growing up in the 1950s and early 60s I was expected to wear shorts, except in the most extreme of wintry conditions. Indeed my school – I’m talking about High School here – had a rule which was rigorously enforced: you had to be a certain age (perhaps 12 or 13) or have reached a certain height (probably 5 feet) before you were allowed to don longer trousers. There were several disadvantages in wearing shorts, quite apart from the embarrassment of exposing one’s knobbly knees. One was simply feeling a bit chilly on cooler days; another was getting onstant cuts and scrapes on one’s legs which never seemed to be in quite the right place as one grew taller.

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Minister’s Message – May 15, 2022

I’m sure we’ve all come across these words:

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth:
one is nearer God’s heart in a garden
than anywhere else on earth”.

They’re part of a longer poem by Dorothy Frances Gurney who also wrote the hymn “O perfect Love, all human thought transcending” which is often sung at weddings. As far as I can make out Dorothy lived her entire life in London, born in the City and ending up in Notting Hill; although she was a Vicar’s wife and possibly lived in a spacious house, I’d like to think that she regarded gardens as a welcome refuge and escape from the noise, smoke and filth of city life.

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Minister’s Message – May 8, 2022

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world;
red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight:
Jesus loves the little children of the world!

Those words, by the American evangelist Clarence Herbert Woolston, were first published in 1913. Woolston, the Minister of Philadelphia’s East Baptist Church was an interesting character: his speciality was using what he called “Object Lessons with Magical and Mechanical Effects” to present the Gospel and he claimed to have “addressed more than a million children” during his lifetime. His obituary noted that he was known as “a pastor-magician who used sleight-of-hand to demonstrate features of his sermons with which he wished particularly to impress his congregation”. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ll tell you now that you won’t be seeing any of that in my message today!

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Minister’s Message – May 1, 2022

Today’s three readings show us a number of people who encounter or see Jesus in radically different ways. First we have seven disciples, who’ve been fishing all night without success, unexpectedly noticing Jesus on the lake shore. He shouts to them because he can see a shoal of fish which, in the dawn light, is invisible to the fishermen. On his instructions they put out their nets one final time and haul in a bumper catch. They beach their boat and Jesus cooks breakfast. Even though this is one of Jesus’ somewhat mysterious resurrection appearances, the whole scene seems commonplace, even domestic.

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