Sunday 15th September 2024
Join us in person or online for a streaming service via Zoom at 10.30 am – check your email or contact us for the details.
A recording of the service is available here.
11th September 2024
Sorting through my bookshelves the other day I came across a relic of the past: the Baptist Union Directory for 2007, containing lists of all ministers and their contact details, together with the information about churches, church secretaries and associations, the colleges and much else. But the annual Directory ceased publication some time ago. Now, in the digital age, everything is online, yes? No. Thanks to data protection rules and fears about misuse of personal data there is no longer a central, readily accessible source of all the information we used to have. Some churches (like Tyndale) have websites. But these don’t always give the details needed for making contact. So, oddly, with the coming of the digital technology that was supposed to speed up communication, communicating has actually in some ways become harder.
Concerns about protection of privacy and misuse of information are understandable. But surely things have gone too far. Someone working in one of our colleges told me recently they were phoned by a friend saying, ‘Sorry, but can you give me so-and so’s email address or phone number?’ In desperation, they had no other way of getting in touch with the family of a minister who’d just died. This is not how it should be for churches. We are – or should be – out in the public square. And we ministers are not called to be wholly privatised individuals, skulking in our dugouts, but servants of other people, available to all as was Jesus. How can we resist being driven by the pressures of our age into a secret corner, isolated from each other and the world?
Keith Clements
Sunday 8th September 2024
Join us in person or online for a streaming service via Zoom at 10.30 am – check your email or contact us for the details.
A recording of the service is available here.
6th September 2024
BBC NEWS
Am I the only one to notice a change in the tone of seriousness on the BBC News? The give-away for me is when either the presenter or their guests refer not to ‘this programme’ but rather ‘this/your show’. This seems to indicate that instead of a concern to inform and educate the object now is to entertain. Rather than a concern for the unbiased presentation and serious discussion of what is happening in the nation and the world today, the concern is increasingly with the world of amusement and fun. Certainly Lord Reith did have all three words in the BBC mission statement – Inform, Educate and Entertain but that was to cover the whole range of programmes not just the news item.
Today an inordinate amount of time is given to news of media-created celebrities in pop culture which is made worse by BBC programmes spending too much time on advertising themselves – adverts used to be the province of ITV and similar channels, not BBC 1 and 2.
All this comes at the expense of news of the wider world. Whilst Ukraine and Israel-Gaza are well covered, other areas of conflict such as Myanmar, Venezuela-Guyana, Somalia and the Sudan, to name but three locations where violence and deprivation are all too obviously present, have received all too little attention. Beyond that there seems too little concern to report good news: the wholly admirable response of the human spirit to tragedy, both individual and communal, today’s great story of sacrifice and service.
And when it comes to religious news there seems to be a fair amount of illiteracy amongst presenters and programme organisers, whilst the free churches, without a recognisable hierarchical structure, are largely ignored.
So three cheers for Tyndale’s Thoughts for the Day which do locally what we are too often denied nationally.
John Briggs
4th September 2024
Often at this time of the year we go and house-sit for our son and daughter-in-law while they are away on holiday. One of our main responsibilities is to look after (i.e. feed) their three cats. It was only recently that I discovered that cats have a patron saint – Julian of Norwich (she is not strictly a ‘saint’, as she has not been canonised – but nobody has told the cats that!).
Julian lived in the 14th century and it was after she recovered from the Black Death that she had some divine visions that led to her becoming an anchoress. For the rest of her life – more than 50 years – she lived in a small cell attached to Norwich Cathedral.
Following these visions she wrote about them. Probably the best-known quotation from her writings is: “But all things shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”. That sentence has given comfort to many down the generations and still does so today. The psalmist put it another way: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46). It does not prevent us from being concerned about all the troubles that we experience or those we learn about – riots, knife crime in Britain, wars in Europe, the Middle East and other places. Nor does it suggest we should not pray about these situations as well as about our own problems. But that promise is always there.
What about the cats – why Julian? The story is that she was allowed to have a cat (presumably a succession of cats) with her in her cell to keep the rats away!
David T Roberts
Sunday 1st September 2024
Join us in person or online for a streaming service via Zoom at 10.30 am – check your email or contact us for the details. The service includes communion.
A recording of the service is available here.
28th August 2024
Weddings have been on my mind this week as our daughter, Amy, got married to Zac in Leicester. As the weekend progressed I found myself making comparisons with John’s account of the wedding at Cana. There was little chance here of the wine running out, or the cheese, pork or doughnuts for that matter. If any miracles had been worked here, they had all been accomplished before the guests arrived.
It seemed that much of what happened mirrored what we try to do at Tyndale. Events were well-ordered but informal, everyone was welcomed, differing needs were catered for, old friendships were renewed and new friendships were formed. (I have so many new and interesting people in my family now, it was like winning a lottery!) The vows that were made were realistic and, I am certain, sincerely meant.
One thing that made the whole event run so smoothly was that key people had been very well chosen. A celebrant that was sympathetic to the views of the happy couple. A photographer who got on without fuss and put everyone at their ease. A venue manager who worked tirelessly with meticulous attention to detail. They created an atmosphere in which guests felt relaxed but also able to make a contribution to the day.
We ended the weekend feeling tired but very happy and wishing Zac and Amy a very happy future together.
Nick Parsons
Sunday 25th August 2024
Join us in person or online for a streaming service via Zoom at 10.30 am – check your email or contact us for the details.
A recording of the service is available here.
23rd August 2024
Moving to the countryside without a car has its problems. In Bristol Uber would get you where you were going and there would be no problem with the return journey with plenty of available vehicles. Here in rural Worcestershire we took an Uber taxi to the local Garden Centre and Retail Outlet – no problem, driver at our front door within five minutes.
Coming home however was altogether different: Uber took half an hour of holding us on line and then said it could not find a driver. Phoning a local taxi firm produced the response that they had no car available for three hours, so we resorted to coffee and cakes and then tried again this time aided by the Garden Centre’s help desk. A number of very helpful phone calls either produced no reply, many of the local firms having only a single car. At last one said that a vehicle could be found but only in an hour and a half’s time. What to do? – more coffee, or more shopping, but then, when we were becoming increasingly desperate, the lady behind us in the queue said, ‘Where are you trying to go to?’ and we told her, to which she replied, ‘That’s easy; I live there’.
Rather simple-mindedly that came as an answer to prayer, and within half an hour we were sitting comfortably at home offering thanks not only to the stranger who came to our aid but also for answered prayer. Now the lady who saved the day for us was in the queue because she had lost her credit card, so in a way her misfortune was part of our salvation, and we certainly prayed that her finances would soon be put right. For us the warning was to give more thought to about how we were going to get home before setting out, something we never had to do in our Bristol days!
John Briggs
Sunday 18th August 2024
Join us in person or online for a streaming service via Zoom at 10.30 am – check your email or contact us for the details.
A recording of the service is available here.