Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

The Rectory St James the Least of All My dear Nephew Darren Ah, the joys of June! At last, I can return to the Rectory without putting on my overcoat before going inside. For the next four months, all windows and doors are left open, in order to let the heat in. If anyone else...

All in the month of JUNE Remembering John Constable Our Marilyn Monroe – born 100 years this month Remembering G K Chesterton BBC Proms will still celebrate the US – despite Trump’s lawsuit Our potholes are killing us ** Editor:  We continue our column that looks at memorable dates in the month (this time, June)...

Did you know we have about 270 kinds of bee in the UK, including 24 types of bumblebees?  Here are just six of them: Early Bumblebee: – Found throughout the UK. Rather small, with distinctive lemon-yellow bands on thorax and abdomen, and an orange tail. An important pollinator of our soft fruit. Common Carder Bee:...

Up to 60 lay ministry apprenticeships in children’s, young people and families work in churches are to be created under a three-year pilot scheme. Innovation funding of £145,000 has been granted by the Ministry Finance Panel of the Archbishops’ Council for a scheme to create between 45 and 60 Youth Ministers. The programme, headed by Church Army, is jointly funded with the...

Alban should be the patron saint of anyone who impulsively offers to help a stranger in need… and finds their own life turned upside down as a result. The story goes that Alban was a Roman citizen quietly living in England in the third century.  Then, miles away in Rome, the emperor, Diocletian ordered a...

This month we return to look at the books of the New Testament. Many today are asking: ‘How does Jesus uniquely reveal God to us? This question lies at the heart of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The church in Colossae was a fruit of his three years ministry in Ephesus (52-55 AD). Paul went...

The church community is growing fast in East Africa. There were 55 million Christians in the Eastern African Region in 1970 and, 50 years later, in 2020, there were over 300 million, spread across 435,000 congregations. That is an average annual rate of increase of +3.5%.  That is faster than the average rate for population growth...

On June 22nd the Church remembers St Alban, who was put to death on that day in 250AD, on the site of the town in Hertfordshire that now bears his name and has a splendid cathedral which houses his shrine. Christianity was struggling to survive in third century Britain under Roman rule. In the middle...

Alban was the very first Christian martyr in Britain – or at least the first we know of. A ‘martyr’ is someone who has died for the faith – the word literally means ‘witness’. He was probably killed during the persecution under the emperor Diocletian in the early years of the fourth century, in the...

 According to followers of ‘The Dutch Method’, it is good to sleep with your curtains open. That way, in the morning your bedroom slowly floods with natural light, which coincides with your circadian rhythm, the internal body clock that regulates your sleep cycle. Natural light also stops the production of melatonin (your sleep hormone) and...

It was: 250 years ago, on 11 June 1776 that the Second Continental Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R Livingston and Roger Sherman to create the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Also 250 years ago, on 11th June, that John Constable, British landscape artist, was born. 150 years ago,...

Adequate scrutiny of the assisted dying Bill before Parliament was a “moral necessity” and not just a “procedural detail”, the Bishop of Newcastle said recently, as the proposed legislation ran out of time in the House of Lords. Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley, said the more closely the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill had been...