Fixing your eyes on Jesus

I was speaking the other day from the passage in Hebrews 12 which talks about fixing your eyes on Jesus. It reminded me how easy it is to get distracted. Sometimes you get distracted when you are driving and if you are not careful the results can be life threatening. Often we get distracted in our day to day day lives. We get distracted by the TV, the computer, the radio, a telephone call, and in other ways like relationships, work, study. We are all different so different things are likely to distract us but the danger is that in our Christian lives we get our eyes of Jesus. The result is that it is not long before our Christian walk is soon affected.

Peter was a classic example. He incredibly made that step of faith onto the water only to find himself being distracted by the waves and loosing focus on his Saviour.

I want to remind myself this week to keep a right focus and keep my eyes fixed on Jesus.

Jesus said "I will build my church"

Last Sunday we have a special day at Beacon Church it was a Membership Sunday. It was great to see 24 adults and 3 young people coming into membership in the church. Our desire in this season has been to "Preparing to Advance" and this was just one step in this process.

On the same day Heather shared of how she feels called to missions in India. It is reminder to us that the church is about people and God is on the move in the lives each one of us. Some he will call to join us and other he will call to other plans and purposes. We can be excited and not threatened by this because Jesus promise us that "I will build my church". Our job is to partner with Him in that process.

My prayer is and belief is that God will provide all our needs - He know them better than we do. Our response is to be obedient to Him!

Living the life!

It has been a week of variety, as often happens in church life. From school assemblies with wide eyed 5 year olds and slightly less impressible 11 year olds, church meetings about the future of church life and the community we have been called to reach and serve. Then there are meetings with hurting people looking for answers and looking for hope.

Then today a funeral. A lady of 93 who had been married for 68 years before her husband died a few years ago.

This lady was someone who had lived a long life, I am sure with many trials and difficulties and yet was someone who had a great faith in her Lord and Saviour. Some funerals are sad occasions with little sense of hope and many tears. Although this was a sad day for family members in many ways this was a celebration of life of someone who was now with her friend and shepherd.

As I read the words of Paul "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain" there was a confidence in my heart that this lady knew exactly what that meant and was not enjoying her reward.

It reminded me of that great statement. "Is that you are living for worth Christ dieing for?" I pray that every day I would be able to say "Yes" and enjoy the journey.

Against All Odds

Hi I thought that it was about time I did an update on my blog. Last weekend a few of us were in Swansea at an special leadership summit. It was a series of excellent teaching via video from a Willow Creek Church in America.


During one of the sessions we were introduced to Patrick Henry Hughes and his remarkable story and the commitment of his dad. It was another reminder of what we can do when we work together with others and a powerful picture of God the Fathers love for us and also what we can do as church when we work with each other.

I hope you enjoy the video.

What kind of church do you want to be part of?

Much of my time working in church has been as part of a team at the City Temple a large church in the center of Cardiff, and that has been a great learning experience. Now that I spend much of my time leading a smaller local church one of the questions I have been thinking about now is "what kind of church do you want to Beacon Church to become?"

A few weeks ago on Sunday morning I spoke about the kind of church that we want to become:

A Well Grounded Church—a church that is built on strong spiritual foundations. And as a church we have spend quite a bit of time looking at how we can strengthen those foundations as we looked at the Fruit of the Spirit and the learned from the early churches experiences in the book of Acts.

A Welcoming Church – A church that is open to all! We want to work hard to welcome those that come through the doors of this church. Those that know Jesus and those who are still on a journey to discovering his love

A Worshiping Church – A church that is known for lifting up Jesus. We know that as we lift up Jesus He will draw people to Himself. Let us worship him when we come together and as we live our lives day by day.

A Witnessing Church—our church mission statement is:

“Touching the Heart of Man,
with the Heart of God,
Through the Heart of His People”

We constantly want to remind ourselves that we are called to reach out to those who have not yet come to know Jesus, with His Good News.

A Whosoever Church - all ages, all backgrounds and all races. We are privileged as a church to have people of all ages and nationalities amongst us. This is exciting because this a picture of the church across the world. Let us pray for open hearts to all who join with us and that we will always seek to be a “Whosoever Church” that welcomes whoever comes to us.

We know that Beacon church is far from perfect but we are excited about the future and all that God has planned for us. I wonder what type of church you want to be a part of - My prayer is that we will be moving forward to achieve the goal of being a local church that Jesus is proud to be known as the builder!

Spell Checker

Any of you who know me well will know that when it comes to writing I am quite creative but my spelling and grammar leave a lot to be desired.. (Thankful I often have the editing assistance of my wife to set me straight.)

Some one set us this and it seemed to sum it up!

I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye is wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as mist aches is maid
It nose bee fore two long,
And eye can put the era rite
It's rarely ever wrong.

I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore you're pleased too no
Its letter prefect in every weigh;
My checker tolled me sew.

Pastor's Blog

As you know I am a big fan of the internet so I thought it was about time I had a blog.

So here it is and because I am old enough to remember the original Star Trek I thought I would give it the rather corny name of Pastor's Blog...

Life as Pastor of a church is never dull and although as you can guess there are plenty of things that happen in a day that will never make it to a blog there are still some things that I hope you will find interesting.

Friday for me is often a day of preparation for the weekend and particularly Sunday services. At present in Beacon Church we in a time called "Preparing to Advance." After being with the church now for just over 10 months it is a time when we want to make some really important steps forward.

Pastor Paul and Evelyne did a fantastic job over the last 12 years building up the church and the churches home the Beacon Centre. So when Myra and I joined the church to help Paul out in a time when he was completely worn out after 12 years of hard work it was a challenge but a privilege to come to the church to help out for a season but God had other plans and so now here we are to stay!

St Mellons is an area of Cardiff with a population of about 12,000 people and the church has about 80 children and adults on a normal Sunday so there is plenty for us to do.