Baker's Bread of Heaven

Two Nuns and a dog

She’s called the Digital Nun and with Sister Lucy and the dog Duncan Disorderly, she lives the life of a Benedictine in Holy Trinity Monastery, East Hendred, Oxfordshire.

Mission Possible

You have to admire the balance of optimism and realism in Jesus’ words - “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few."

Culture and Change: Moving Vision Forward

I’ve been reflecting on how as a Church we keep before us the challenge of our Strategic Vision in relation to starting a satellite congregation in Pontprennau, building a centre for vocational training and sending Mission Partners, like Huw and Alison Williams, to Italy.

Leaders Who Last

Longevity is the key to an effective life – well it’s certainly the key to a long life!! But gentle humour aside, I’ve become fascinated by the correlation between a long term commitment to a job and its success.

Finding Your Voice - the Truth of Authentic Words

We’ve all had the experience no doubt, of losing our voice at a critical moment. Not because of a sore throat, but when we have been tongue-tied, lost for words, paralysed by nerves or just gone momentarily blank.

Process Theology!

How do we effectively process all the stuff that God does in our lives through events, people and circumstances?

The Lament of Faith...

In the past two weeks we have been dealing with two tragedies as a Church. The first, a 19 year old boy who, while watching Liverpool FC on TV was suddenly taken ill and died within an hour; the second, a mother who was asphyxiated by a fire in her home.

The Great Escape...

That’s not a reference to my favourite TV war movie (!), but to the way Evangelicals spent the last sixty years of the 20th Century, as they tried to work out exactly where, why and how they had lost touch with the Jesus of the New Testament.

The Waiting is Over

I’ve never got on terribly well in waiting rooms - doctors, dentists, or airports. Actually waiting in general and for anything is not my gift! So you can imagine how manic I was as a young boy whenever Christmas came around!!

Quod in vita facimus, in aeternum resonat

It’s with a very real sense of gratitude that I write a website tribute to Carolyn Jowers, who leaves the Staff of Highfields this month after more than nine years with us.

Hiraeth

A couple of Sunday’s ago, a woman approached me in Church after the service and said, “I got up this morning and felt a hiraeth for Highfields.”

The Promise

One Christmas I desperately wanted the deluxe version of the electric racing car game, Scalextric.

The Goldilocks Enigma

After hearing Philosophy Professor, Peter Williams, preach at Highfields last weekend, and like many others enjoying him, I managed to get hold of his book - "A Sceptic’s Guide to Atheism". Read it! It’s a great demolition job of ‘New Atheists’ like Dawkins, Hitchen and Harris.

Boring irrelevance or community of hope?

When I think of Church … I want to run away as fast as possible!

On a road less travelled

“I shall be telling this with a sigh | Somewhere ages and ages hence: | Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - | I took the one less travelled by, | And that has made all the difference.”

What's so great about being fifty?

Well, as Bilbo Baggins said, himself fifty at the beginning of The Hobbit, it is “clearly time for a new adventure!”

A pot by any other name

We got rid of hundreds of small clay pots at church on Sunday. By ‘got rid of’, I mean sold, not destroyed!

Prodigal Church

“Church members are very forbearing and forgiving regarding the neglect of the lost, while extremely impatient and unforgiving regarding the neglect of the righteous."

Where are we making a difference?

I was asking that question this week. If Highfields had not become involved, what would have happened?

It’s a big world after all!

Just blown away this week by how wide the grace of God is, and how great His plans for the nations.