Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

If you have elderly neighbours who are on their own, it is worth bearing in mind that many of them will have been hit by pandemic anxiety. They may feel frightened to leave their homes. Such is the finding of a recent study by the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London into the effects...

What have you got in common with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton? You have all visited the Watford Gap Services on your way up or down the M1. Back in the early 1960s, the M1 transformed the way that bands could travel, and visiting the service station was an integral part of...

Sunday 5th September is being designated Climate Sunday, ahead of the UN’s climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow during November. How should we approach the challenge of climate change? We have damaged God’s creation: God delights in His creation: ‘God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.’(Genesis 1:31). However, we have...

Alan Smith, Senior Advisor – ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) Risk and Inclusion, and former Global Head of Risk Strategy at HSBC, is to be the next First Church Estates Commissioner. Alan has also been a Church Commissioner since 2018. The First Church Estates Commissioner chairs the Church Commissioners’ Assets Committee, a statutory committee responsible...

St Ceolfrith is a good patron saint for anyone who has studied hard for their profession, is strong in the face of tragedy, and who can also offer some homely care to others in need. This well-loved abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow came from a noble Northumbrian family, and was ordained at Ripon when he...

If you have a child or grandchild, it’s quite possible they will have tried cannabis. Known in various forms as pot, weed, skunk, Ganga and marijuana, it’s the most widely used illegal drug. One in three 17-year-olds have experimented with it and some are now regular users or addicts. Described as the ‘gateway drug’, one in 10 cannabis...

How to make the most of a church meeting Learning lessons from a graveyard Female clergy Two thirds of churches in UK plan to keep streaming online, says survey Five things we’ve learnt about Truth in the pandemic ** Editor:  David Pickup, a solicitor, offers some tips for holding a successful church meeting. How to...

Wilson Carlile was born in Brixton in 1847, and did not set out to become an evangelist. Instead, he was brilliant at both languages and music, and excelled as a businessman. That is, until an economic recession and serious illness brought him crashing down and finished his career, aged only 31. Not surprisingly, a serious...

This month we are looking at the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20). It’s the story of a farmer who sowed his seed in different type of soils. These represent the different responses of the heart to God’s Word (v15-20): 1) The hard heart: ‘like seed along the path…as soon as they hear it, Satan...

Put the kettle on. Children should begin to drink tea from the age of four, in order to combat later stress, obesity and heart disease. So says the results of a recent study which appeared in the Nutrition and Food Technology journal. It says that green tea and the more traditional black tea contain compounds...

The World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund for Nature) was founded 60 years ago in Switzerland, on 11thSeptember 1961. It is now believed to be the world’s largest conservation group, working in wilderness preservation, and reducing human impact on the environment. A group of distinguished scientists, conservationists and businessmen, including Sir Peter Scott...

The Church of Scotland has expressed sadness after recent new figures revealed that 1,339 people died of drug-related deaths in 2020. The rate is a 5% increase on the previous year and is the highest on record. The Director of CrossReach, the operating name of the Church’s Social Care Council, said: “These latest drug-related deaths...