January 2026
JESUS
When we read the Gospels we see that Jesus differentiates between the suffering that He is committed to freeing us from and the sufferings that He asks, requires of us.
People having good health of mind, body and spirit is incredibly important to him. The healing ministry is a top priority for Jesus. We embrace this Ministry whenever we, through action, conversation or prayer help someone who has a health issue. It can stimulate us to come together for Healing Prayer Groups and for Healing Services. Praying for the ill and the bereaved is a feature of Christian worship. I recall from my time as a student in Cardiff a service led in the Chapel of Cardiff Baptist College by one of trhe students for Ministry. It was what is called ‘Sermon Class’ and those who had been at the service then gathered to let the Preacher know what they thought of it. It stays in my mind how one Preacher was criticised by College Principal Dr Ithel Jones for having no prayer in it for the sick and the bereaved.
The Caesarea Philippi incident where Jesus and those who have been closest to Him get into a very highly charged conversation tells us about Jeus that it was an integral part of His vocation to suffer grievously at the hands of those who were passionately opposed to Him. God needs Jesus to suffer the amount He did if He is going to be able to defeat the power of the Forces of Evil. Why Peter remonstrated so loudly with Jesus about this could in part be that we do not like to see it, someone we admire or think the world of having a terrible time of it, being a victim of injustice, expereincing man’s inhumanity to man. It may also be because he realises immendiately that anyone who is aligned with Jesus may be called upon to suffer in a like manner. Ther have indeed been countless martyrs for Jesus Christ, those who have been put through hell on earth that together God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit might create heaven on earth. Jesus willingly devotes Himself to God who is minded to do something to sort out what is wrong with people and with creation. Jesus was breath-takingly outstanding in how He gave Himself for God and for everyone and everything that God has made, is making and will be making. But, do we pray enough for those who are suffering for possessing and practising their faith in and their love for Jesus Christ?
Blessed Candlemas!
Geoffrey
December 2025
PAUL
Reading through Paul’s first Letter to the Church in Corinth it struck me about Paul that he had great sense of responsibility for the well-being and welfare for Churches he was associated with. He had this strongly held inner conviction that he exercised this responsibility as a key part of his God-given vocation.
Tom McPherson, one of my Philosophy Tutors of my student days in Cardiff wrote that the different religions have this in common: each has a Creed (statements about what they believe). a Code (convictions to what is right and good behaviour), a Cosmology (how they perceive the nature and character of our world and the whole of creation).
Creed and Code both come into it when Paul is writing to the people in Corinth. He is very assertive, speaking much about himself. I wonder if the people there felt he was at times being too full of himself, for he says of himself in a section where he comes over to me as being at pains to justify himself: “I have no right to boast just because I preach the Gospel. After all I am under orders to do so.” When preaching it is important to possess self-belief but that self-belief must not be self-generated but be founded on and rooted in God’s belief in us. We must needs combine a true self-confidence and an amazement that God could possibly have faith is. Whoever leads worship or leads the Church in any way needs to know what a privilege and what an awesome thing it is to find oneself in this position. I wonder if Paul wasn’t just talking to the people of Corinth but also and, as much, to himself.
November 2025 (3)
JESUS
When I read a Gospel like Mark’s and picture myself right there where Jesus is, I get the distinct impression of Jesus that he was an immensely strong individual.
He must have been gifted with huge levels of physical strength, incredible stamina and amounts of adrenalin. He had so much ‘get up and go’. He also had the personal strength to stand his ground when others laid into him verbally. He had the strength of faith to believe in God when people were minded to ‘rubbish’ him, and even when he had those supposedly closest to him disappointing him or argueing with him. It strikes me he had the capacity to believe even when he was the only one who did believe.
The stories or parables Jesus told reveal for me his strength of mind. He was blessed with a wondrous creativity of thought. He invites and calls on us to use our imaginations to think what he is saying about the people who feature in them. He must have had the power to think deeply about things. So he had no difficulty thinking about God and thinking about God in a way vastly differently from how his contemporaries had long thought about God.
Another strength he had and this an astonishing strength: to allow himself to go and to be taken into where he was vulnerable to having his strength destroyed, to being robbed of being his real and true self. He had the strength to be weakened.
If I had the freedom to design from scratch a new Church, I would see as a ‘must’ a la Orthodoxy a substantial icon of Jesus Christ Pantocrator. When on TV I saw the interior of St Martin’s Mangravet Maidstone, it pleased me to such to see both a crucifix and an empty cross.
Yesterday I passed on the bus by St Bartholomew’s Beltinge Herne Bay. This Saturday they have a Fair: good for them that they call it an Advent Fair rather than a Christmas Fair
November 2025 (2)
GOD THE FATHER
When we say that God is holy, we are saying a multiplicity of things about God. One thing we are saying is that God is absolutely pure. He is always the same. always good, consistently beyond reproach. It is beyond God to fall from grace. Were God to fall from grace, God would not have been God in the first place. This is why we may place our trust in God 100%.
This does not rule out our finding ourselves or being in a position where we question God. For a further aspect of God’s being holy is that He is wise. He never does anything unwittingly. He knows perpetually what He is about. So He never finds Himself at sixes and sevens or at His wits’ end.
So, God’s being holy necessarily includes His being awesome. Our showing reverence and feeling respect for God is what we say about ourselves that we have a ‘fear of God’. We demonstrate this when we are quick confess our being fools and sinners to God. I heard once an Anglican preacher say on Radio that we need to be far more minded than we often are to really mean it when we say “Glory be to God …” I personally have enormous misgivings about the usual current practice of having notices and family news announced ahead of Worship. We are talking about ourselves at a time when our focus must be fully on God. To exclude Notices and family news from Worship suggests to me that we think God is but at best only half-interested in what we say in them. Remember the God we talk up is the God who, in the words of Rowan Williams, “takes us seriously”. True Worship begins and ends with a Doxology.
November 2025
PAUL
Paul must have had a big personality. If in a room of people, his presence would have been noticed and felt. He was endowed with a large amount of self-confidence, feature if him that we might say God traded on. The dividing line between believing in oneself and believing too much in oneself is a very thin one. Read the start of I Corinthians ch 4 and, like, you could feel that Paul is becoming very personally defensive. Folks in the Church there have clearly been criticising him. He feels under pressure to once again justify himself and his ministry.
He is deeply sure that what he is doing with his life is by the grace of God. He is following through his God-given vocation. He does not claim to be above being judged but it is God alone who is qualified and in the position to pass judgement. Paul doesn’t, it seems to me, take into consideration the thought that God might be party to some one else’s or some group’s criticism of him. So, might we accuse Paul of thereby being critical himself?
However, we may side with Paul in fearing that religious believers can be prone to being judgemental. I recall from the 1970s a companion Minister in Northampton, Ian Prentis; saying that this is what can put people off Church. the Church people being judgemental. When on a holiday to Eastern Europe I met a man from Dunfermline who had ditched Church because of Church going people who thought themselves because they went to Church to be superior to non-Church going people; and those Churchy people were members of his own close family!
October 2025
JESUS
The New Testament adorns Jesus with many titles. Delve into the sigificanxce of them and each, in my view, indicates both something of the uniquely special relationship Jesus has with God and somethong of how Jesus is interconnected with humanity.
The highly intense conversation Jesus has with the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, as reported by Mark, is one fo those passages which suggest that Jesus thought of himself as ‘the Son of Man’. Amongst scholars there is an on-going debate as to what Jesus had in mind when he referred to himself by this title. Was it merely an elongated circumlocution for ‘I’, a non-egotistical way of talking about himself though at the same time a transparent statement about his own self-connfidence and self-belief.
Scholars havbe long discussed whether or not Jeus picked up on a concept possibly found in the book of Daniel. Also in Ezekiel, we read of Ezekiel’s being addressed as ‘Man’ by God and thus affirmed by God as being a special person. Such discussion knocks on the head any idea that ‘Son of Man’ contrasts with ‘Son of God’ the latter emphasising Jesus’ relationship with God the former his being very much part of the human race. Like all the other titles for Jesus in the New Testament, ‘Son of Man’ has to do with Jesus’ special relationship with God. Jesus is the member of the human race who has the greatest relationship with God. He can only be ‘the Son of Man’ because he is ‘the Son of God’.
Jesus and God are so tied up with each other, Jesus’ being part of what God is in himself raises the question of whether the God who features in other faiths (including Judaism and Islam) can be thought of as the same God as Christians believe in. As Christians we might ask God what he makes of other faiths: what is his involvement, if any, in such faiths?
SEPTEMBER 2025
GOD THE FATHER
The word ‘holy’ is a word only properly employed as an adjective or, to use a term much deployed by Philosophers, predicate applied to God and to places, people and items connected with God. It encapsulates the principle that God is a unique entity, “that than which none greayer can be conceived”. This we recognise when we say of God is “Immortal, invisible, God-only wise”. There are a number of these words that we use of God which sound like they are negative terms, but when we use them, we are saying what God is not in order to say what God positively is. In doing this we are putting God on a level where God alone is and can be.
I have been recently reading the 1976 Bampton Lectures delivered in Oxford by the late Professor in the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge, G W H Lampe. On p 205 he writes of God that he is “indefectible” He is perpetually 100% good and pure, worthy therefore of our unceasing praise and adoration. Part of what it is for God to be indefectible is his being infallible.
He argues that it is a serious mistake to label any place, person or item, however intensely inter-connected with God, as infallible, because those places, people (eg the Pope) or items (eg the Bible) are beyond being indefectible becaue they are located within a situation that is less than perfect. Somewhere, someone, something might be ever so very good but never completely good God has this mission (could we say ‘has this drive and passion’?) to make wherever, whoever, whatever is ever so good into becoming yet better still
July 2025
HOLY SPIRIT
I am slowly reading through the prayers and meditations that are the book by the one time Dean of York Eric-Milner White ‘My God my Glory’ I notice time and again he prays the Holy Spirit to help him to pray. The Spirut gives esssential and indispensable stimulative and corrective help. Thus::
“Lord, who givest the will to pray,
make my prayer good,
humble, ardent and effectual,
by the kindling of thy Spirit ….
Banish distraction, inattention, coldness;
Make mine eyes to see, mine ears to hear, my tongue to speak, my soul to be still ..”
PAUL
Paul often writes about himself. When talking about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, he is frequently autobiographical. I heard say one-time Tutor at the then London Bible College, Donald Guthrie, that Paul had to talk about himself because Church people in his day had no access to the Gospels as they had yet to be written.
I can picture Paul joining loudly in the chorus words, “I know whom I have believed ..” However in the opening verses of I Corinthians ch 2 he sounds somewhat less sure of himself. There are tensions between him and the Church people of Corinth and Paul, who usually comes over as ever so confident, is being considerably defensive. We find him justifying himself. If we are really or apparently over-sure of ourselves, we are vulnerable to provoking others to taking exception to us, to our being like this.
June 2025
GOD THE FATHER
Church worship in the Free Church tradition in which I lead begins with an affirmation from Scripture about God. Increasingly in my mind when we gather to worship, our first priority has to be to ‘talk God up’. Similarly, I believe that worship has to close with a celebration of God. Worship begins and ends with Doxology. Without the opening and closing Doxology. our ‘worship’ has started and closed improperly.
A most appropriate hymn with which to begin is “Be still, for the Presence of the Lord. the Holy One is here ….” This assures us and puts us on alert that God is always the first to be in Church, there to welcome us into His Presence. I recall from my Oxford student days a term when our regular early Friday evening acts of worship in College Chapel were led by a number of visiting preachers. A fellow student (now Professor Paul Fiddes) said to me that he was getting tired and a bit downcast by the way each and all of them were beginning with a ‘call to God to come’, as if there was some, if not considerable doubt that God was there: would God join us or not join us?
Not so long ago I heard a prayer in Church in which we invited the Holy Spirit to join us. The phrase spoiled the worship for me. It sounds to me lie an arrogant patronisation of the Holy Spirit. Talk like that to the Spirit and we treat the Spirit as if the Spirit is lesser than us. Conversations I have had with a number of my fellow retired Ministers indicate deep concern amongst us about the quality of the worship in today’s Churches; there are those who lead worship without having been through a sufficiently rigorous training process.
We need to remember that the word Church means ‘House of The Lord’. It is God Father, Son and Holy Spirit’s territory; we must recall this immediately we call it ‘my’ Church or ‘our’ Church or someone calls it to us ‘your’ Church. How a building is, what it is like decor wise affects the nature of God’s engagement with us. I recall from the 1970s, when in Bath Abbey on a day trip with the Men’s Meeting group of the Walgrave Baptist Church, Church member Austin Walker coming to me and saying “This building is far more conducive to getting a feeling of the Glory of God than ‘our’ village Chapel that has a feel of God’s being somewhat ‘chummy’.”
April 2025
HOLY SPIRIT
In the 1980s I heard a sermon prompted by what Paul said to Timothy (II Timothy 1 v 6) that he should “stir up the gift of God which is in you”. The occasion was the inauguration of that years’ Chorleywood Churches Holiday Week; a massive enterprise that happened only because so many people were committed to making it happen successfully. It required people of very different talents to be involved. Preacher John, an Anglican who had previously been in Chorleywood as a curate, was picking up on and homing in on this.
A few days later a University student member of ‘my’ Church made a critical comment. John had not differentiated between those gifts we have whether or not we believe in God, though as believers in God we see them as gifts of God within us, and those gifts we have (like healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, preaching persuasively) because and only because we have a real connection and relationship with God. With The Holy Spirit there are contrasts; for the Spirit can be either in cognito or conspicuous.
PAUL
Though writing to the Church people at Corinth (I Corinthians 3 vv 9ff) as a community of people, he encourages them to think of themselves as a building. They can only get it right for God if they constantly inter-connect with one another in such a healthy spirit that make a cohesive and united whole. Paul was clearly instrumental in the coming together and the making of this community. He asserts that the key and foremost ingredient of this community has to be Jesus Christ. I wonder if he is talking as much to himself as he is to them. The Church does not belong to him or to them. It is not ‘my’ Church or ‘our’ Church. It is ‘Jesus Christ’s Church’. Neither individually nor collectively must we, dare we take Jesus Christ’s Church away from Him.
I recall going in 2001 to Beziers Cathedral, As I entered I noticed a notice reminding us who visit that the real point of visiting the Church was to meet with Jesus and to allow Jesus to meet with us.
t ‘The Sisters of the Love of God’ in Oxford. Though basically a silent order place, I had conversations with one of the Sisters who explained to me how the role of Mother Superior rotated, any Sister only having that responsibility for two years, this so that the Community did not become dominated by one Sister. They were part of the Anglican Carmelites. The late Fr Wilf McGreal, a frequent contributor to BBC Radio Kent, himself a (Catholic) Carmelite said to me that the role of the Head of a Carmelite House was to be more like a Co-ordinator than a Ruler.
HOLY SPIRIT
I find that the 19th century Baptist Pastor J C Philpot says a lot about he Holy Spirit in his sermons. One is based on the very warmingly positive words of Paul in Romans 8 vv 16-17:
“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.”
He preached on this in North Street Chapel, Stamford on Sunday morning April 4th 1858. His motive for doing so seems to have been his ‘observation’ that many who went to Church hadn’t reached this point in their faith journey where they confidently thought of themselves as children of God, that some have not a healthy but an unhealthy fear of God. From a fairly lengthy opening section of a characteristically lengthy sermon (but not quite as long as some!), I sense that he was currently aware at the time of people whose faith was going through a low ebb. His hope and prayer was that he would say things that would re-energise their faith and lift their inner spirits.
PAUL
Paul wrote his letter to the Church in Galatia because he was sorely disappointed with them, ow they had lost their way in the journey of faith and he is seeking to retrieve for them the faith in Christ as Saviour that they once enjoyed. So he begins with an affirmation about himself, that his “call to be an apostle did not come from man or by means of man, but from Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from death.”
I heard in a sermon John Taylor. when Bishop of St Albans say that, when interviewing someone who had aspiration to be ordained or to be a preacher. he was focused on this more than anything else: the person had this aspiration as a gift from God: it had to be His will for them; they must have received or had a ‘call’ from God.
Late July 2023
THE HOLY SPIRIT
Quotation from mid 19th century Baptist Pastor J C Philpot. Based on Romans 1 v 16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believeth.”
The Gospel in its power is not a mere proclamation of mercy; not a mere declaration of good news; but it brings the mercy which it proclaims, and communicates the salvation it reveals …… the gospel is good news, glad tidings; but if the gospel do not reach the heart; if it do not speak peace to the conscience; do not reveal pardon and peace to the soul as a manifested blessing; do not set the prisoner free, or bring the captive out of the low dungeon; however blessed the declaration may be in itself, it falls utterly short if it leave the prisoner still in the prison house. We see then that something more is needed than a mere proclamation of mercy; and that the same God of all grace, who has sent forth the glad tidings of pardon and peace in the gospel, must himself apply it with a divine power to the soul; for I am sure that without this, it falls utterly short of the deliverance from the cures of the law, the accusation of Satan, and the condemnation of a guilty conscience. Now God will not let the gospel fall short to any vessel of mercy. It shall do as well as speak; it shall act as well as preach; it shall liberate the prisoner as well as tell him that there is liberty for him.
Preached Sunday morning December 9th 1860 at North Street Chapel, Stamford. The full sermon occupies in small print 24 & a bit A5 pages of paper!
I have 12 volumes of his sermons brought together under the heading ‘The Gospel Pulpit’, the books previously owned by Baptist Minister Grandfather (the Revd Frank Fells) who died in 1953.
May blessings be in abundance for yourself!
Geoffrey
