2nd September 2026

September, the new academic year, has always been a time of fresh starts for me. I know that the calendar hints at January being a time for new resolutions and that the church calendar insists that the year starts at the beginning of advent but September is when my personal starting gun fires.

So how lovely it was this past Sunday to have St Peter (looking remarkably like Sam King) as our guest preacher. He reminded us that God’s future is bigger than our imagination. That we cannot know what God has in store for us, just that we should take the next faithful step knowing that God will be with us as we step into our surprising future.

It can be that, in our weary moments, we think “oh no, not another year, just like the last”. But that was not true for Peter, or for Moses, and it does not have to be true for us. We just don’t know in advance what new things await us. Our job is to stay alert for the opportunities to try something new, or try to do the same thing differently.

This week sees Tyndale taking a new step in the way we work. Tiffany joins us as our administrator offering us many possibilities for doing things differently. Please pray for Tiffany as she takes on this new challenge and for the rest of us as we adapt to working in a new way.

As I left the building after Sunday’s service I overheard the message of the service encapsulated in one of my favourite modern idioms: “every day’s a school day”. We never finish learning, God is not finished with us yet.

Nick Parsons