Messy Churches

This week we had our wonderful Messy Church Holiday Club - and it was, in the very best sense of the word, messy. Glue. Paint. Small children. Slightly chaotic crafts. Laughter in all directions. It was, lots of fun and that’s exactly what church can look like all the time (perhaps with less glue and glitter!)

The reality is, all church is messy. We can sometimes imagine that church is a place for people who have things sorted - where you arrive with your faith neatly sorted out and your doubts left in the car. But that has never been true, and it certainly wasn't true of the people Jesus spent his time with. Fishermen who got things wrong. A tax collector nobody liked. A woman who had been married five times. A disciple who denied him three times before breakfast.

Messy, every one of them.

God has never once asked us to have it all together before we show up. The invitation has always been to come as we are - with the glue on our hands and the unanswered questions and the bits of life that don't quite stick properly. To bring the mess, and see what he does with it.

There's a line I love from Psalm 34: "The Lord is close to the broken-hearted." Not the sorted. Not the sorted-out. The broken. The ones who arrive a little undone.

So wherever you are this week - whatever mess you're carrying - you are exactly the kind of person church is for.

Hope in the rain

As I type, it's actually raining - not dramatically, not a downpour, but enough to smell it on the dry ground, enough to feel the relief of it. After such a long dry stretch, it is tempting to go outside and stand in it for a bit!

On Sunday evening at our Evensong service, Andrew, one of our local farming community who always leads the prayers beautifully, mentioned that he'd been preparing to drill rape seed. He said something that has stayed with me - that drilling rape seed is always a hopeful job. Especially into dry ground. You are placing something into the earth that has no guarantee of growing, trusting that the rain will come, that the conditions will turn, that what seems unpromising will one day surprise you.

Hope is like that. It is not optimism - optimism looks at the evidence and expects things to go well. Hope plants something in dry ground anyway, not because the conditions are right, but because you trust the one who sends the rain.

The Psalmist writes: "Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them." It is an ancient promise, made for dry seasons like the one we have been experiencing.

Whatever you have been sowing this week - in hope, in patience, in quiet faithfulness - may the rain come, and may you know the faithfulness of God.

Looking ahead to new beginnings

There is something about September that feels like a new beginning - perhaps more so, for most of us, than January ever does. In our house, the school bags will come out, for many the routines will restart, and for all the nights begin to draw in just enough to remind us that the year is turning. Whether you have children heading back to school, or you're simply feeling that familiar shift in the air, September has a way of marking something. A new chapter. A fresh start.

This September we’ll have our own changes in The Offchurch Group. All our services are moving to a new time slot, and the first Sunday morning of each month will just be an Eden service. If you’ve never been - Eden is a place, designed to make space for everyone, young and old to worship together. We have songs old and new, some with actions,  a reflection to help focus our minds for the week ahead and prayers for each other and the world.

This is a change for us, and change - whatever it looks like - can be unsettling, of course. New Services, new teachers, new classes, new colleagues, new challenges. Not every new season feels welcome at first. Sometimes we'd rather hold onto the summer a little longer.

But there is something quietly hopeful about the rhythm of seasons - the reminder that life moves, that things change, and that change is not always loss. The natural world has always known this. The trees don't mourn the summer; they simply turn, and in turning, they become extraordinary.

There is a line in the Bible that has always struck me as one of the most honest and hopeful things ever written: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" We’ll be thinking about this in our first Eden service on the 6th September. It's from the book of Isaiah, and it was written to a people who were exhausted and uncertain about the future - people who perhaps felt a bit like we do sometimes, not quite sure what the next season holds.

The invitation is simply to pay attention. To notice what might be stirring. To be open to the possibility that something good is on its way.

Whatever September brings for you - new beginnings, new challenges, or simply the quiet comfort of familiar rhythms resuming - I hope you find something in it worth holding onto. And if you're looking for a community to journey through the new season with, we'd love to see you. Our doors are always open. Something new is springing up - come and be part of it.

Total Eclipse of the Heart...

This week, many of us caught a glimpse - or tried to - of the solar eclipse. For those of us who were around in 1999, it didn't quite have the same level of drama. On Wednesday, the partial eclipse was more subtle. A slight dimming. A sense that something was happening, even if you had to squint to notice it.

The obvious thing about an eclipse is that the sun doesn't go anywhere. It is still there, still burning, still doing everything it has always done - it's just that something has got in the way of our seeing it clearly. You may know the famous words "I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining." These profound words come from an anonymous poem scratched onto a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany, by a Jewish person hiding during World War II. They are a powerful testament of hope and endurance during the Holocaust.

The eclipse, and these words, are a stark reminder that the light hasn't failed. Our view of it has simply changed.

I think there are seasons of life that feel a bit like that. Seasons where God feels distant, or obscured, or simply hard to locate. Where the warmth we once felt seems to have dimmed without us quite knowing why. And in those moments, it can be tempting to conclude that the light has gone out altogether.

But the sun was there all along.

The Psalmist knew this feeling well. They wrote - "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" - and yet they kept singing anyway. Faith, perhaps, is less about always seeing clearly and more about trusting what you know to be true even when the view is obscured. Choosing to believe, on the grey days, that the light hasn't gone anywhere. The eclipse passes, as it always does.

Fasting

Over the past few weeks I've been reading about fasting. What first caught my attention wasn't actually the spiritual side of it, but the growing body of research into its health benefits. It struck me that something many people now see as a new discovery has, in fact, been part of the Christian life for thousands of years.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised fasting isn't the only example. Today we're encouraged to slow down, practise mindfulness, rest well, be generous, and spend time in community. Christians have been cultivating those same habits for centuries - not because they're fashionable, but because they help us make space for God and remember what really matters.

Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (John 10:10). The Christian life isn't simply about believing certain things; it's about learning a way of life that leads us more deeply into the life God created us for.

This Sunday we’ll be exploring fasting together - why Jesus assumed his followers would do it, what it teaches us, and why this ancient practice still has something to say to our busy modern lives. Whether you've fasted before or have never really thought about it, we'd love to welcome you.

Pilgrimage

This week I'm writing from New Wine - a large Christian festival in Somerset where thousands of people have travelled from across the country, and indeed from around the world, to worship together. There is something quite extraordinary about it. Strangers becoming friends over coffee, children running between tents, music spilling out across fields - all of it held together by the simple fact that we are all heading in the same direction.

It feels, in the best possible way, like a bit of a pilgrimage. This theme has been picked up in the all age worship, and Nick and Becky Drake, who write many of the songs we sing at Eden, have written a new song called The Pilgrim Way.

The idea of life as a pilgrimage is ancient. The Psalms of Ascent - Psalms 120 to 134 - were songs sung by Jewish pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the great festivals. They sang as they walked. They encouraged one another on the road. They arrived, not just as individuals, but as a people.

I think that's what the Christian life is meant to feel like. Not a solitary trudge, but a journey made together - with companions for the road, songs for the hard stretches, and a destination worth heading towards. We are, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

Wherever you are this week - whether you're at New Wine or another Christian Festival, on your summer holiday, or simply at home - you are part of the same great pilgrimage. We are all, together, on our way home. 

All Change

This week we had yet another new Prime Minister walk into number 10. Whatever your politics, there is something a little dizzying about the sheer number we seem to get through at the moment. Seven in a decade. Each comes with promises and hopes and then the inevitable disappointments. It feels a bit, at times, like a revolving door of people who were going to fix things.

I don't say that to be cynical - I genuinely pray that Andy Burnham and his team will do well, and I hope they do. But it does make you wonder how much we pin our hopes on earthly kingdoms and the people who lead them.

Tomorrow we'll be singing Ancient of Days, I’ve quoted this before, but it carries a line that feels particularly timely this week: "kingdoms rise and fall, there is still one king reigning over all."

If we are feeling a little weary by yet another change in power, this isn’t an excuse for disengagement - we should care deeply about how our country is led. We must pray, and remain hopeful - but this song reminds us that we have another, far more secure anchor. Governments come and go. Leaders rise and fall. And through all of it, there is one who does not change, does not resign, and does not let us down. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." That's an anchor worth holding onto.