Hither Green Baptist Church

This morning's sermon was on the non-healing miracles of Jesus (we looked at the healing miracles with Mark Wheway in July), as another part of our series going back to the gospels and learning from how Jesus spoke and acted.

For reference, here is a table showing the miracles that Wulf identified in his research:

The accompanying sermon will soon be online in our sermon archive.

We have recently spotted a couple of glitches in our online sermon archive - if you have tried to get a recent sermon and received an error page instead, that has now been fixed so please try again!

Also, thank you to those who flagged up the problems - once we knew, we were quickly able to sort them out. If you find something that doesn't work on the site, please tell Wulf on Sunday morning or send an email.

Two more sermons, by Wulf and David are available in the online sermon archive, bringing us up to date on our current series.

This Sunday we will be welcoming back David French of Christ the Rock Ministries, who will provide the next addition to our understanding of what Christian worship is all about.

Yesterday's sermon, which gave an introduction to our new series on worship, is already online (as part of the sermon archive).

The question most of us will remember was "what do you bring to contribute to the worship pot?". As we exercise the privilege of gathering together for congregational worship, are we bringing attitudes that express the worth of God and our love for each other? Those things are wholesome and much healthier choices than throwing in the dog-end of our time wrapped up in a coating of self-absorption.

Food for thought and certainly something to chew on before we gather together again next Sunday morning with our contributions.

David's thought-provoking sermon on Psalm 88 is available in the online sermon archive.

Here are verses 1-9, taken from The Message translation:

God, you're my last chance of the day.
I spend the night on my knees before you.
Put me on your salvation agenda;
take notes on the trouble I'm in.
I've had my fill of trouble;
I'm camped on the edge of hell.
I'm written off as a lost cause,
one more statistic, a hopeless case.
Abandoned as already dead,
one more body in a stack of corpses,
And not so much as a gravestone,
I'm a black hole in oblivion.
You've dropped me into a bottomless pit,
sunk me in a pitch-black abyss.
I'm battered senseless by your rage,
relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger.
You turned my friends against me,
made me horrible to them.
I'm caught in a maze and can't find my way out,
blinded by tears of pain and frustration.

You can read the whole Psalm on the Bible Gateway site. Unlike most Psalms, it doesn't get any happier than that; have a listen to David's sermon as he unpicks what this has to say about living a life of faith in the darkest of times.

Sorry to anyone who was avidly awaiting the podcast of this week's sermon - due to a technical hitch, we didn't get it recorded. You will need to visit the website of the Mercy Ships ministry to find out about the kind of things they were telling us about about their work providing medical care and relief along the West African coast, in the second week of our series looking at the work of various mission agencies.

Last week we welcomed the Baptist Mission Society and heard particularly about their work with displaced peoples along the Burma / Thailand border. Next week we have a missionary from SASRA, who work with the UK's armed forces, followed on 24 September by a visit from Tearfund, which coincides with our harvest celebrations.

Over the past few weeks, we've been experimenting with digitally recording the teaching at our church as well as producing audio cassettes for those who miss out because they are leading our Ignition children and young people's groups. That means we can now put the messages online, which allows much easier access for those who want to listen again (or for virtual visitors who want to pick up some Christian teaching from afar).

We are still fine tuning the presentation but you can now visit our sermon archive and choose from a selection of recent preaches, including yesterday's message on spiritual gifts (47MB MP3).

David has published the notes he used for his introductory sermon to our current preaching series on the foundations of what we believe.

You may find the following questions useful, either in cell group discussions or for your own personal study:

1. Have you ever worked for a company or organisation that has a statement of core values or beliefs? What kind of things were mentioned? (If you have younger members in your group, don't forget schools, which often have a code of conduct.)
2. Do you think this is a helpful idea for churches and Christian groups? Our church stands by the Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith - how do you feel about that?
3. Whatever you feel personally, spend a few minutes as a group identifying some things that are good about having a clear statement of faith.
4. Again, whatever you feel personally, spend a few minutes as a group identifying some potential problems with having a written down statement of faith.
5. Finally, read through the basis of belief (if you are leading the questions it may help to print out a few copies). Even after hearing about it on Sunday you may still find it quite hard to understand. However, can you identify one part that particularly encourages you or challenges you at the moment?

As well as thinking and talking about the questions, don't forget to follow up with some prayer. Understanding the foundations of Christian faith isn't easy but God doesn't expect us to do it on our own.

This morning I'm bringing our series of messages on Transition and Journey to an end by sharing some reflections from the trip I took last year down the Way of St James, an ancient pilgrimage route that runs across Northern Spain, as well as thinking about how the lessons learnt there can be applied to the journey we're on as a church.

For background reading, there is a wealth of information on the Internet. Look up "the way of st james" or "el camino de santiago" in a search engine and you'll get lots of hits.

You could also look at my personal resources - there's an index of blog postings I've made about the subject and you can see the journey plotted on a map with some of my pictures (or click on the image in this posting to view the full photoset).

¡Buen camino!

Via an article about the local area in the Wikipedia, I've found a new website with local information - http://www.hither-green.co.uk/. There's also an associated discussion forum.

Check them out for local information - and do come and join me in participating in the forum.

Wulf