To the Cross

The other day I saw a young girl (about 6 yrs old) wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed: "It's all about me ME ME!" This young girl is a hedonist in the making. Little does she know of the prison she is building for herself. Little does she know of Satan and his cohorts who are all too willing to help her. The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that is good for a person. Hedonism can be conjoined with psychological egoism - where people are motivated only by their self interest. Isaiah observed this attitude in Israel: "Let us eat drink (and be merry)" you say, "for tomorrow we die!" How sad that there is a real potential for this child to finish up like this:- All this only reinforces the importance (and high calling!) of children's outreach in the church. It was Bill Wilson of Metro Ministries and founder of Kidz Klub that said: "It iseasier to build boys and girls then to repair men and women" . How...

The four fundamental questions of every world view are: * what is the nature of the universe? * what does it mean to be human? * what has gone wrong with the world? * what is the solution to our problem? "The question that we as preachers need to ask is, whether it is the Bible that is giving them their fundamental understanding of the nature of the world, the identity of humanity, the reality of sin, and the solution that God offers through the cross and resurrection and the new creation that he will bring, or whether it is some other world view. We need to preach the Bible so that people have a coherent understanding of the world and where they fit in the great scheme of things" (Chris Wright in Preach the Word)

"God's always with us - at our Big Top!" The masked man kidnaps grandma

Just had an amazing week at Riding Lights Theatre Co 'Summer School', where in one week under amazing direction and incite from Play Directors Peter Hutchinson and Bridget Foreman we put on a play called "Cloud Street". Adapted from an award winning novel by Tim Winton, the play is about two Australian families who come together to share a huge run down house in Perth in the 1940s. Sam Pickles (played by myself and later a friend - Trevor) was a gamblerholic, married to an alcoholic with 2 children. His world view (god) was based very much around the 'Shifty Shadow' of fate. In contrast to this the other family (the Lambs, with 6 children) find meaning in work and God's grace. The lambs never the less suffer tragedy when their son 'Fish' gets drowned in a a fishing accident. He is ('like Lazarus') 'brought back to life' but suffers brain damage in the event. Despite the tragedy and Fish's eventual return to the water to commit...

Wot no Posts? The reason for not posting for a while is that I have just had an amazingly busy three weeks - the first a holiday club, then a much needed holiday and this last week a very busy week in which I took part in a play production by Riding Lights Theatre Company (more on the play later). The holiday club (with a circus theme) took place between Tuesday and Friday followed by a service and BBQ on the Sunday. The huge hall of Kirkheaton Parish Church's 'Old School' was done out with striped drapes hanging down from the ceiling and striped canvass all round the room to give the image of The Big top. Two 'ringmasters' did the work of emcees, clowns performed to set the theme for the day, an act from a play (written by one of the church members) about an 'evil' masked man who wanted to close down the circus was performed daily, Bible stories were told in creative ways and we had times of worship and craft throughout. My favourite Bible story was ...