Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

** Fresh ideas for doing church The elderly priest, speaking to the younger priest, said, ”You had a good idea to replace the first four pews with plush bucket theatre seats. It worked like a charm. The front of the church always fills first now.” The young priest nodded, and the old priest continued, ”And...

September can be a bad time for financial pressures. This is when the children have just returned to school, universities are opening, and suddenly Christmas spending looms. Retrospectively, the bills for summer child-care and that holiday (where you spent too much) are coming in, as well as the recent outlay you had to make on...

** Observations on our Christian pilgrimage… Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil – it has no point. – Billy Graham Because of God’s grace, failure is never final. – Anon Don’t give up on yourself. God doesn’t. Even Moses was once a basket case. – Anon We never do anything so secretly but...

A special collection for the Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal for World Aid and Development by parishes in Down and Dromore to support people caught up in the violence in Gaza and the wider Middle East, has raised over £10,000. It will be channelled by the Bishops’ Appeal to two trusted partners working on the...

My Father’s house has many rooms… I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am.  John 14:2-3 There are some couples I see in church, but only rarely do they attend together. You may know them. The explanation is quite simple, and it is not...

What is an angel? Easy, people think: a shining figure with glorious wings, who appears from time to time to do some mighty work for God or bring a very special message from him. Well, that’s right in one sense (apart from the wings, which owe more to stained glass windows than the Bible). But...

Walking by rivers or the sea has long been a favourite pastime of those of us out for a relaxing stroll. But in the UK just now, beware. Too many of our rivers and too much of our coastline has been infected with raw sewage. Some statistics:  there are about 14,500 storm overflow drains in...

Sundays of the Month 3rd  August       Seventh Sunday after Trinity 10th August     Eighth Sunday after Trinity 17th August     Ninth Sunday after Trinity 24th August     Tenth Sunday after Trinity 31st August      Eleventh Sunday after Trinity ** Editor:   Kings and mystics, writers and martyrs – August does well with its feast days that remember outstanding Christians. 1         ...

St Ethelwold (c.912 – 84) did great things for the church at Winchester, which in those days was the principle town of Wessex.   He began as a simple monk, eager to restore the Rule of Benedictine in England, a major reform for the church of the time.  So, after serving at the abbey in Glastonbury,...

You know how some men find some women’s interest in romance and clothes hard to cope with?   Well, Sithney (or Sezni) should be the patron saint of all such men. According to a Breton folk legend, Sithney was a hermit of long ago, minding his own business, when one day God told him that he...

Jean-Baptiste Vianney is the saint for those whose passion is to help people find peace with God. Vianney was born near Lyons in 1786, the son of a peasant farmer. With no money for schooling, he first became a shepherd. But, like David in the Bible, his deep personal faith and zeal soon drew him...

Many Christians have dreamed of doing something spectacular for God, which would be remembered for centuries afterwards. Oswald, who lived from 605 to 642AD, was in a position to do so. He was a King, whose father, Aethelfrith, was a great warrior who laid the foundations of the great kingdom of Northumbria. But Aethelfrith was...