Dear Friends,

Greetings to you all and I hope this finds you well.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost, when we recall how shortly after Jesus' ascension the wind of the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, transforming them and sending them out on their mission to the world. The Holy Spirit is spoken of in John's Gospel as the Comforter - one who brings strength to the vulnerable and I do pray that you will know something of that Spirit strength in these difficult times.

Dear Friends,

A few matters for this week:

1) at our Consistory meeting this week we decided that, all being well and if things continue as they are, we will be opening the church for a limited congregation on Sunday June 20th. At present we can't be sure how big the congregation can be - currently it would be 30 but it might have increased by then, so we will have to monitor the situation.

Dear Friends,

in my sermon last Sunday my theme was 'connectedness', taking my cue from a passage in John's Gospel where  Jesus speaks of himself as a vine of which we are the branches (a theme I am continuing with this Sunday). I think it was very appropriate that after the service a marvellous online concert in aid of the Mulanje Mission Hospital in Malawi that we had organised was posted on our website…

Dear Friends,

I'm glad to say that despite the limitations imposed by Covid church life does go on and there are  some important notices for you this week which I'd draw your attention to.

1) This Sunday, May 2nd, is the first of our 'Summer Proms' Zoom concerts in aid of the Mulanje Mission Hospital. A wonderful concert has been pre-recorded by our musicians, featuring music by J.S.Bach, Adolf Busch and Joseph Haydn. It will go up on our website at 13.00 on Sunday and be available thereafter. Don't miss it! The next concert is in three week's time, May 23rd. See our website for more details.

Dear Friends,

This Sunday's passage for our service is perhaps the best known passage in all of Scripture: Psalm 23, which begins, 'The Lord's my  shepherd, I shall not want...' This is a psalm that has been set to beautiful music and is regularly read or sung at funerals, weddings and other rites of passage. It strikes me what a very good passage it is for this COVID time.

Dear Friends,

I do hope that in the past few days news of my impending retirement has reached all of you through one channel or other. As I said in my letter, this has not been an easy decision but various factors make me feel it is the right one and the right moment.

The words that have been coming to my mind in recent days are those of the hymn - I suppose really a children's hymn - and a good one in times of change:

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you once more, one week after Easter Sunday.

This Sunday our reading takes us first to Easter Day, when Jesus rose and appeared to his disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem and blessed them with peace, and then to a week later when he appeared to them again in the same place and again greeted them with his peace. On the first occasion one of Jesus' disciples, Thomas, was not there and could not believe the other disciples' reports that they had seen the Lord.

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you as I write this letter on Good Friday, as Holy Week draws to a close and Easter Sunday approaches.

For Easter Sunday this year I have asked a number of people to record themselves on their phones, saying in between 1 and 5 words what Easter means to them. The result (I hope) will be a collage of brief testimonies as to the meaning of Easter which will form a part of our Easter morning Sunday service. I look forward to it!

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you once more as another week draws to an end, and as we are about to embark on a very special week indeed. Yes, Sunday is Palm Sunday, and then there follows the most important week of the Church's year, Holy Week, culminating with Easter Sunday. As ever, it will be very full, with much going on and some services being live-streamed from the church and some being pre-recorded.

Dear Friends,

It has been election week and the results are now in and I gather that it is good news for those who tend towards the right and less good news for those who lean more to the left - and bad news for the Green Party. You will all have your own thoughts about the results but it does seem to me that being in government and having political power at the moment is very difficult indeed, due to the sheer scale and complexity of the problems facing the world. COVID, of course, has presented huge challenges but so many other problems we wrestle with - justice, equality, peace, social cohesion - are intractable and neither the right, the left, the centre, or any coalition can easily sort them.