Who should take the Lord's Supper?

I have been looking at this subject for some time now and on Monday I delivered a paper to the Westminster Fellowship. We were to have met on February 5 but the train strike menat it was moved and that was a good idea as there were more than 20 present. We had a good discussion after before and after lunch, moving on to one or two other matters in the process. Excellent charimanship from Paul Yeulett of Grove Chapel, Camberwell. Nice to meet his new assistant, David Hendircks. My father-in-law and I had lunch with him. Nice moment when David said his wife was German and Geoff could say his wife is too. I will try and get it into shape for a magazine article.

Lord's Day February 11 2024

 

Last Lord's Day was special in that we had a visiting preacher, Jeff Haskins from Lancaster, who preached very well from Isaiah 40 and Acys 5:12, and we had lunch together after the morning meeting. For the third Sunday in a row we were packed in the morning. No sign of anything happening in the evening yet. These are encouraging times then. As ever, there are pople missing, however.

10 Impressionist Artists

1. Claude Monet
2. Edouard Manet
3. Pierre Auguste Renoir
4. Camille Pissarro
5. Alfred Sisley
6. Berthe Morisot
7. Mary Cassat
8. Frédéric Bazille
9. Gustave Caillebotte
10. Paul Cezanne

Midweek Meeting February 7 2024

We were quite a small number on Wednesday for the midweek meeting (five), although a few (two or theree) were able to join us online. There seems ot be quite a bit of sickness about still. We looked to the final verses of Galatians, all written in Paul's own hand. This was followed by a brief time of prayer.

Day Off Week 6 2024

Tuesday was taken up with some traditional activites such as reading about art, buying cheese, having coffee, etc. I spent a while in West Hampstead (browsing the charity shops, reading in the library, having lunch in Chipotle). The art book I read was the one in the Parragon series on The Impressionists. I also read more of the books I mentioned last week. The cheese I wanted (stinking bishop) was not in West Hampstead but I was able to get it in Hampstead. Had a nice chat with my sister on the 'phone there. Eleri out all day and evening. In the evening, I watched the film Maestro about Leonard Bernstein. Like so many geniuses he was rather self-centred and hard to live with and not someone you would want to know. Felt rather ill towards the end of the day, my sinuses I would guess (it felt like toothache).

Lord's Day February 4 2024

Bit slow with this but we had a great day last Sunday. We began with a communion service at which we welcomed in three new members, all of whom have grown up under the Koran. Then there were around sixty once again in the morning service as I began a series on the Sermon on the Mount. Many are Iranians but there were two new Chinese ladies too (one from Taiwan, one from Singapore). In the evening we were a much smaller bunch. We looked at Job 38.

Rugby 2024

The six nations is underway. I watched a bit of Ireland France and Italy England. Italy came so close! My father-in-law came over to watch the Welsh game (several relatives including my sister were there in the ground). It was certainly a game of two halves if there ever was one - embarrassing for forty minutes and then nail biting, skilful stuff that so nearly ended in victory for Wales. (I can't shake the niggling thought that one Welsh player giving away a penalty with a silly prank cost us the game but it is not that simple).

At the game they paid tribute to Welsh players who have died in the last year. The one that meant most to us all was JPR Williams who died last month. And then yesterday they announced that Barry John had died. Another immense figure in Welsh rugby.

Midweek Meeting January 31 2024

Eight of us gathered on Wednesday with one or two on zoom. We looked at Galatians 6:7-10 and then spent time in prayer. Good times.

Day Off Week 5 2024

Today's day of was a bit different becasue I had arranged to meet someone and the gas engineer had to be here to fix our boiler. I did manage to get out of the house to wonderful West Hampstead, where I bought some cheese (haven't done that for a while) and picked up a secondhand book I have had my eye on since it came out. Anopther book came by post (Days of Glory). I am also reading a fascinating book on Charelmagne one of my sons bought me for Christmas. In th evening we watched the final episode of The Crown and very moving it was too. Not a bad daydespite a major computer problem.

Subliminal Advertising

I thought subliminal advertising had been outlawed but there on page 171 of Matthew Roberts Pride it is clear that have paid to the good people who run the Carey Conference and publish RT to advertise their mag subliminally. We should be told.

Pride at the PA

We had a bumper turn out at the reading group at the Pastors Academy in Finchley last Monday. We must have been around 16 and had to remove from the Library to the Lecture room where there is more space. Spencer Cunnah chaired. The book under consideration was Matthew Roberts' book on the whole subject of culture's obsession with identity. Many were quite positive about the book but several, nevertheless, felt a little nervous in places. It was hard to tease this out really but we were generally agreed that the approach to homosexuality that has dominated the evangelical scene needs refuting as this book does. Anyway very stimulating. We will meet again in May, God willing, when we will look at Rumours of a better country by Marsh Moyle.

Lord's Day January 28 2024

We had a great turn out last Lord's Day morning, perhaps as many as sixty. We baptised two more Iranians, which got people along (at least 18 there). I preached from the closing verses of Matthew. In the evening we were in double figures but a much smaller cloud when I got round to the message from Revelation 19 I had hoped to preach earlier in the year. Not having preached for three weeks I was raring to go and quite excited.

Midweek Meeting January 24 2024

Lovely to be with eight or so others to pray and to look at Galatians 6:1-6. We also opened the baptistry for Sunday afterwards.

Multicultural London

Multiculturalism has a downside perhaps but mostly it is a joy to be in the midst of it. Two cases yesterday. I was in Golders Green and I spoke with a Trinidadian lady who had come to Golders Green becasue she knew it had Jewish shops and she was after a Jewish prayer shawl. I warned her that it would not make her pray any better but pointed her in the direction where the Jewish shops are mainly situated. As I spoke with her one of my members passed. She is a Londoner but her father is Japanese and so she is very aware of those cultural nuances. Then on my way back I passed two African women talking in a language that sounded suspiciously like Hebrew. One of them confirmed to me that it was. I mentioned the falashas but she did not seem familiar with that word. I don't recall ever meeting a Hebrew speaking African.

10 Scavenger type words

Nemo305620, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

There was a news article recently about mudlarks. It got me thinking of these various terms.

1. Beachcomber (someone who walks along a beach looking for valuable or interesting items)
2. Mudlark (someone who scavenfes in river mud lookiung forobjets of value)
3. Scavenger (someone who searches for and collects discarded items)
4. Forager (someone who searches widely for food or provisions)
5. Treasure hunter (someone who searches for suken, buried, lost or hidden treasure and other artifact)
6. Scrounger (someone who searches about and turns up something needed from whatever source available)
7. Rummager (someone who searches for soemthingdifficult to find among other things)
8. Gatherer (someone who collects things or forages for them)
9. Collecter (someone who collects objects togerher, ususally becasue they are valuable or interestng)
10. Hoarder (someone who collects large amouonts of something and keeps it for themselves, often ina  secret place)

(A detectorist is someone whose hobby is usinga metal detector to locate lost coins, etc)