Beckenham Baptist Church

  Dear Friends, This week sees the beginning of the celebrations for the Chinese New Year, traditionally lasting some 16 days and this year starting with Chinese New Year’s Eve on 31 st January and lasting until the Lantern Festival on 15 th February. Those celebrating will enjoy time off from work and visits to their family to enjoy eating, drinking and cooking together and exchanging good wishes for prosperity and blessings for the coming year. In our Operation World prayer resource we’ve been praying for the continent of Asia, praising God for the growth of the Church into new places including China and the former Soviet countries in Central Asia, and thanking God that the growth in the church in Asia has largely been through the work of national workers, local evangelists and ordinary believers. But life for Christians in China is fraught with danger, including persecution, threat, arrest and imprisonment, and the Chinese authorities continue to crack down on the followers of

  Dear Friends, One of my abiding memories of my time training to be a minister was a visit I made to Israel as part of the Young Adults Study Tour with the Council for Christians and Jews (CCJ). We were able to meet with Jewish settlers and Palestinian students to hear something of their stories which they each faced in life. We visited some of the famous sights, including the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Masada National Park, and the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, which is dedicated to the memory of the Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. Holocaust Memorial Day is remembered each year on the 27 th January which marks the liberation of the largest of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945, where over a million people were murdered, including over 200,000 children. At Yad Vashem there is a children’s memorial of five candles in a darkened mirrored hall that reflects these lights and symbolises the 1.5 million

  Dear Friends, This coming week marks the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (WPCU) and each year there is a set of materials produced to help people focus on that year’s theme. The theme for 2022 has been prepared by the churches of the Middle East under the title, ‘We saw his star in the east’ from Matthew 2:1-12, looking at the visit of the Magi to the Holy Family in Bethlehem. From the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland website we read that the history of the churches in the Middle East is one that historically and still today is ‘ characterised by conflict and strife, tainted with blood and darkened by injustice and oppression. The Christians of the Middle East offer these resources conscious that the world shares many of the travails and much of the difficulties that it experiences, and yearns for a light to lead the way to the Saviour who is the light that overcomes darkness. Serving the Gospel today requires a commitment to the human being, especially

  Dear Friends, I’ve recently started using a new daily devotional resource from Jeff Lucas, the speaker, broadcaster and author of a number of Christian books, called Life with Lucas . The January to March issue will look at the apostle Paul’s first letter to the believers at Corinth, but firstly at the gospel of John which the booklet describes as ‘a photograph album, as Jesus’ friend and disciple John, shows us some beautiful ‘pictures’ of Jesus. These word portraits are designed to stir our faith and trust in Christ, enabling us to experience the abundant life that He offers’. The first account from the gospel that we’ve been focusing on is the story of Jesus changing the water into wine at the wedding in Cana from John 2, the first of the seven ‘signs’ or ‘miracles’ in John’s gospel. Signs are all about us in everyday life and a sign is designed to help us to make a decision on the information that the sign communicates. So signs can point us in the right direction, warn us of a h

  Dear Friends,  Firstly let me wish you a very happy new year! So often at this time of year we might reflect on the past year and look forward to the new and we might make a new year’s resolution, to get fit, to eat less, to achieve some goal, to make an effort in a relationship, or something else. But perhaps 2022 will mark a more hopeful beginning for you. After all, the last year and half have been pretty challenging for us all, and we may want to reflect upon how God has been gracious and faithful to us, as individuals and as a church, as a community and as a nation, in what have been events that none of us could have imagined we would live through. Hope was one of our themes in the season of Advent, but as the Christmas season continues, we can be assured that hope isn’t just for a particular time or season, nor for just a certain year, hope is something that we as followers of Jesus Christ should always have in our hearts, and something we should always have on our lips as a