Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

** Already well connected The telephone rang in the church office of the church that the MP attended when visiting his constituency. An eager voice inquired: “Do you expect the MP to be in church on Sunday? If so, I was thinking of coming along.” “That,” said the clergyman, “I cannot promise. But we do...

Josephine Butler is the ‘saint’ for anyone who believes in social justice. This remarkable 19th century clergyman’s wife became a renowned campaigner for women’s rights and for putting a halt to human trafficking. Josephine was born in Northumberland in 1828, the daughter of a wealthy family of liberal politics and committed Christian faith. They had...

20th – 24th May brings us the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The most prestigious gardening show in the world, it attracts about 168,000 visitors a year. Its cutting-edge garden designs have been called the ‘haute couture’ or ‘World Cup’ of gardening. Here are 12 interesting facts about the Show: The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is...

There is a healthy tension at the heart of the Christian journey. It’s the push and pull of staying, or of getting up and going. And the Bible speaks of both as part of the normal Christian life. In 1 Corinthians 15:58 Paul seems to be spurring his readers on to do even more, “Therefore,...

Martyn Snow, the Bishop of Leicester and lead bishop for the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process, has released a new book, entitled ‘Can We Imagine a Future Together? Intercultural lessons for Living in Love and Faith’*. In the book, Bishop Martyn says: “Despite the great depths in our disagreements over Living in Love...

How to get children to behave better? Feed them better. It seems that providing children with healthy diets and regular nutritional supplements can help reduce anti-social behaviour. The charity Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) puts it this way: improving the nutritional diets of a child is ‘low cost’, but ‘likely to have a high impact on...

For the last couple of months we’ve been thinking about baptism, it’s place within church life and what it means to each of us on a personal level. This month, let’s look at the actual font where baptisms usually take place. Over the years Christians have used a wide variety of ‘fonts’: the sea accessed...

With Ascension Day (29th May) in mind: What? Do we place Christ midway among the spheres? Or do we build a cottage for Him among planets? Heaven we regard as the magnificent palace of God, far outstripping all this world’s fabric. – John Calvin  When Jesus came to earth, He did not cease to be...

‘O Lord of hosts … if you will give me a son …I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life.’  (1 Samuel 1:11) Three ‘C’s will help us to grasp this most personal and moving prayer. First, the prayer’s context.   Hannah was the childless wife of Elkanah, who had sons...

By regularly giving £10, you can put a Bible into a needy stranger’s hands each month. What kind of stranger? Someone like Anatoliy, a Christian in Ukraine who can reach soldiers on the frontlines. Two weeks after he gave a Bible to a soldier called Kyrylo, Anatoliy met him again and heard about the difference...

Upton House in Warwickshire was the home of a millionaire oil magnate, Walter Samuel, in the 1920s and 30s. The origin of that fortune is displayed in the collection of early Shell posters, but the house is now owned by the National Trust. The interiors still breathe the art deco atmosphere of that earlier lifestyle....

Did you know that driving on rural roads is more dangerous than driving on urban ones? According to the NFU Mutual’s Rural Road Safety report for 2023, the number of lives lost on rural roads was a staggering 70% higher than on urban highways. Also, collisions on rural roads were around four times more likely...