A place to
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission

From Easter to Pentecost and beyond our Sunday morning services focusing on the Fruit of the Spirit

Sunday 7th May
Love

Sunday 21 May
Joy

Sunday 4 June
Pentecost
Peace

Sunday 18 June
News of CHIKS
In India with Sue Cole

Sunday 25 June
Parade

Sunday 2nd July
Baptism

Sunday 9th July
Patience

Sunday 16 July
Kindness

Sunday 13 Aug
Generosity

Sunday 20 Aug
Faithfulness

Sunday 27 Aug
Gentleness

Sunday 3rd Sept
Pyramid Rock
Holiday Club

Sunday 17 Sept
Self-Control

Sunday 24 Sept
Harvest

It’s been quite some week for a holiday!  We made it to the Millennium Stadium to see the Robins triumph in the Playoffs and get into League 1.  What a day!





We missed the Open Top Bus Tour and stayed on in Cardiff, enjoying the delights of South Wales, not least Treherbert, the Rhondda and spectacular views of the Brecon Beacons from the top of the Rhondda.

That’s one of those places for me that captures the wonder of God’s creation!




And yet, it has once again been a troubled world.

A glance at the BBC’s week in pictures and you cannot help but feel for those caught up in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in East Timor.  The world we live in is a broken world.

With Christmas and Easter Pentecost is one of those wonderful celebrations of Christian faith that helps us not just make sense of the broken world.   It empowers us to go out into that broken world to transform it.

Preaching on the fruit of the Spirit I jumped at the chance I had to bring Neil in with his wonderful apple tree.  He was half way through an apple when he discovered a pip had begun to sprout.  He planted it and it has the makings of a fine apple tree.

The story of the Bible is built around fruit, maybe even, the fruit of the apple tree.

The Bible opens with a celebration of the wonder of God’s creation.  But immediately there is an awareness of the brokenness of the world.  Human beings, created in the image of God, have built into them an inclination to break with the ways of God.  And that has massive consequences for humanity.

That’s the insight the Bible has in the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

The wonder of God’s Creation is seen in Genesis 1 and 2.

Humanity is set within a framework of God’s making in the world of his creation.  But there is something inside ‘Everyman’ and ‘Everywoman’ that prompts them to break with God.  That’s the story of Adam and Eve and the infamous apple.

Break with God, as Everyman and Everywoman, Adam and Eve, do and the world of God’s creation is broken.

The break with God is described in Genesis 3 ... And the consequences for individual human beings.

That break with God results in broken relationships: that’s what the Cain and Abel story is all about.

That break with God results in violence with all its cataclysmic consequences: that’s what the story of Noah and the Flood is all about.

That break with God results in untold hostility between nations: that’s what the Tower of Babel story is all about.

But something has happened to restore the broken world of God’s creation.

It is nothing less than a new creation.

That’s what Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:3

No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so. 17 Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come. 18 All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others his friends also.

19 Our message is that God was making the whole human race his friends through Christ. God did not keep an account of their sins, and he has given us the message which tells how he makes them his friends.

20 Here we are, then, speaking for Christ, as though God himself were making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ's behalf: let God change you from enemies into his friends! 21 Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God.

6 1 In our work together with God, then, we beg you who have received God's grace not to let it be wasted. 2 Hear what God says:  “When the time came for me to show you favour I heard you; when the day arrived for me to save you, I helped you.” Listen! This is the hour to receive God's favour; today is the day to be saved!

That means we have a task to carry out ... “All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others his friends also.”

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and entrusting to us a ministry of reconciliation.

That’s the task we share at Pentecost.

In Christ we are a new creation, bearing the fruit of peace.  And we are part of that new creation he promises as we look the wonderful fruit of the tree of life in the glory of God’s kingdom:

“On each side of the river of the water of life was the tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”  (Revelation 22:2)

If the fruit of the Spirit is Peace, the task at Pentecost is to sow the seeds of Peace.

That’s what we are about in our church here at Highbury: in our commitment to mission.

It is what we share with churches together through Christian Aid as we recall that wonderful Tree of Life they have installed in the British Museum, a sculpture that has taken the weapons of Mozambique’s horrific civil war and transformed them into the branches of a Tree of Life.

IT is what we share through the Council for World Mission, our own partnership of 31 churches worldwide sharing resources of people, time and money in the mission of God’s Kingdom.  What great news this week that the rains came to Tuvalu - how important we are commited to the care of God’s creation alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ in those Pacific islands threatened by global warming.

This is the work we share.

This is the fruit we bear.

The fruit of the Spirit is peace.