Past Preaching Programme

The Bible uses a number of pictures and images to describe the church. Each of these provide us with different insights into its nature and purpose. Evangelical churches like Christ Church have sometimes been accused of having a rather low ecclesiology (theology of the church) and failing to recognise the importance that the Bible gives to it. As we start up our regular morning services again and relaunch Christ Church, it is therefore a good time to reconsider the nature of what church is meant to be and how we can respond to this calling and challenge.

The Bible uses a number of pictures and images to describe the church. Each of these provide us with different insights into its nature and purpose. Evangelical churches like Christ Church have sometimes been accused of having a rather low ecclesiology (theology of the church) and failing to recognise the importance that the Bible gives to it. As we start up our regular morning services again and relaunch Christ Church, it is therefore a good time to reconsider the nature of what church is meant to be and how we can respond to this calling and challenge.

Justice, Love, Spirituality, Beauty, Freedom, Truth and Power. These are ideals that we all strive for, yet so often we find ourselves falling short. Why is that?

Inspired by Tom Wright's 2020 book, we will be looking to the Gospel of John to help us to see, not only why we strive for these ideals, but also why we so often experience them as broken. In doing so, we hope to find how Christianity provides us with the vision and resources for mending these signposts, giving us a clear and compelling explanation of the world, and of our role and responsibility within it.

What if Jesus words were never intended to fit into your existing lifestyle? What if they were meant to change everything? What if Jesus really meant the things that he said? What might our response to His teaching look like? If he meant what he said how might his words affect our relationships, investments, speech, perspectives, politics, shopping, and every other aspect of life? What does it really mean to be a Disciple?

There are multiple accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the New Testament, with each one a unique and significant event. This short series looks at three of those events and explore what was special about each occasion: on the 'dusty road' to Emmaus, His appearances to the disciples 'behind locked doors' and beside the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Climate change caused by our carbon emissions is threatening our planet as never before. It affects us all, but particularly the poorest people in the world. As Christians we believe we have a God-given responsibility to care for God’s creation.

During this sermon series we will be exploring the theological basis for our relationship with the natural world, and Christian belief regarding its future. With a different theme being launched in the sermons each week, combined with the daily challenges during Lent, we hope to reduce our carbon footprint as individuals and as a church.

During this Carbon Fast we can examine and reshape our daily patterns of life, our spending habits and our travel choices and help preserve God’s creation for future generations.

As we begin a new year entering another lockdown, we look forward to a time, hopefully later this year, when Christ Church is fully restored.

As part of this hope, the talks in our services up to Lent will focus upon how we can 'Build Back Better' in 2021 as we think about what sort of community life we will return to.

At Christ Church, the month of August is usually marked by the return of an incredibly moving and powerful sermon series called 'Why I'm a Christian', which invites members of Christ Church to share their stories, and explain what their faith means to them, and how it has made a difference in their lives. This year, we're putting a new spin on an old classic, as some of the members of our staff team reflect on their faith journeys, as part of a series of talks entitled 'Why I'm still a Christian'.

As we entered the first lockdown and the closing of our buildings, in common with other churches we had to switch to on-line services.  This covers a series of talks during this period as we addressed the uncertainties caused by the pandemic.    

Within the four gospels we see four major titles used for Jesus – Christ or Messiah, Son of Man, Son of David and Son of God. Each of these titles has a crucial background within the Old Testament which we need to engage with if we are going to understand the significance of their application to Jesus. We will also seek to reflect on the relevance of each of these titles to our calling to make Jesus known in the world.

Christians are constantly being summoned to respond to a whole host of different situations and issues. Rather than simply ‘going to with the flow’, we are called to respond to them in a distinctive manner that is shaped by our faith in Jesus Christ. Often we find this very difficult and challenging. In this series we will look at a number of such situations and issues and reflect upon the ways in which we can both understand them better and make a distinctively Christian response to them.

The start of new decade provides an opportunity for us to focus upon our priorities and direction. Part of this is a renewed response to our calling to be a people who display care in regard to the various responsibilities that God has entrusted to us. During this series, we will examine a number of these responsibilities as a church and seek to reflect upon how we can fulfil them more effectively. The very practical aim of this sermon series is that every member of Christ Church will identify the key area where God is calling them to make a difference through the care that they bring to it.

However familiar they are, the Christmas story always contains more to teach us. During this series we will take the words spoken about Jesus by Gabriel, Elizabeth and Mary and ponder what they have to teach us about the significance of the coming of Jesus Christ.

Part of our calling as Christians is to look for God in every part of our lives. Paradoxically, the run up to Christmas can be one of the most difficult times to do this as we are surrounded by so much busyness and stress. During this series we will look at a number of different aspects of the Christmas season and consider where God might be found within them.

A central claim of the New Testament is how every strand of the Old Testament story was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. During this series we will look at how this was true in the case of four of the prophets and the different insights that Isaiah, Micah, Malachi and Daniel give us about the significance of the coming of Jesus Christ.

Luke’s Gospel has a particular focus on God’s love in Jesus for those on the margins of society. This very much included women, and during this series we will look at four episodes from the gospel when women were encountered by Jesus and had their lives transformed by God’s love.

Our lives are full of things that frustrate and perplex us. Often it is very hard to combine honestly and openness about these struggles with ongoing faith and trust in God. A number of the psalms model this, and during this series we will use four of them to think through how we keep the conversation with God going when we feel forgotten, forsaken, rejected and abandoned by him.

Food and drink are part of God’s good creation. However as with everything good that God has given, it is all too possible for us to use these things in a manner that is harmful to us, to others and to creation itself. During October, we will therefore look at some of the ways this can happen, how it can be avoided, and how we can have a properly Christian approach to our food and drink.

A recurring covenantal phrase associated with God throughout the Old Testament is ‘The LORD… the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin’ (Exodus 34.6; Numbers 14.18; Nehemiah 9.17; Psalms 86.15; 103.8; 145.8; Joel 2.13; Jonah 4.2). As Jesus fulfils the covenant we see all of these characteristics displayed in his ministry, and during this series we will explore each of them and their significance.

God’s covenant is a recurring theme throughout the Bible, with each of its different stages adding something vital to the story of its path to fulfilment. At the six30 service during September and October we will work through the different stages of the covenant that God successively makes with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and which the prophets then speak of coming to its fulfilment in the coming of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and reaching its consummation in the New Creation.

Romans is commonly regarded as Paul’s greatest letter. What is recognised less often is its nature as an exposition of the covenant. During this series we will work through Romans seeking to follow Paul’s careful explanation of how the covenant appeared to be in jeopardy because of Israel’s sin, only to find its surprising solution in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Romans is somewhat complex, and understanding its contents will involve grappling with technical terms such as ‘righteousness’ and ‘justification’, as well as the issues involved as Gentiles became members of God’s people alongside Jewish Christians. But the aim is to make full sense of the practical teaching that Paul gives at the end of the letter about the sort of church that we should aspire to become in the light of the covenant love of the God who has rescued us in Jesus Christ.

God will often change our lives through the impact of the lives of other people. During this series, four members of Christ Church will talk about a Christian who changed their life and what it was that this person said or did that made such an impact on them. The aim is to both encourage thankfulness for the way in which God has worked through others to bless our lives and also to recognise the impact that we too can have for God in the lives of others.

The New Testament is clear that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ lie at the centre of his mission to bring God’s forgiveness and restoration to the world. Often, however, we are rather unclear about how the distinctive activities of Jesus related to this. During this series we will think about this question and the part played in Jesus’ mission by his exorcisms, his parables, his healings and his prayer.

The Wisdom Literature contains little explicit mention of themes that the rest of the Bible makes central. All of them, however, address in different ways the question of what sort of world are we living in and what it looks like to live well in that world. During this series we will look at Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job and the Song of Songs and think about the wisdom we can gain from their different perspectives.

Practical atheism – living large parts of our lives without any reference at all to God – is very easy for us to drift into. But God is relevant to every part of our lives, and during this series we will take four areas of our lives – our pets, our holidays, bereavement and parenting – and think about how a Christian perspective both can and should dramatically change our approach to them.

Peter is one of the most vivid characters in the New Testament. Within the gospels, he is the impetuous Galilean fishermen that Jesus calls to follow him, getting as much wrong as he gets right. Then, within the Acts of the Apostles, we then see Peter as a key leader within the early church speaking and acting with the authority of the risen Jesus. During this series, we will look at several of the key episodes involving Peter and seek to learn from the very different aspects of his discipleship.

Christ Church possesses a number of very beautiful stained glass windows. Although the church has existed for over 150 years, most of the windows come from the period between 1896 and 1919. There are just three exceptions from 1878, 1965 and 2001.

Each of the windows possesses a particular story connected with it, usually concerning former members of the church for whom it was given in memory. In virtually all cases, their actual content, however, is focused upon a biblical story or theme that was understood to speak powerfully into the context of that person’s life or contribution to the church.

Writing in the April 1896 Parish Magazine about the window given in memory of Arthur Herbert Streeter and depicting Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the Light of the World, the second Vicar of Christ Church, the Reverend William Allen Challacombe said these words

‘The eye is a medium of knowledge as well as the ear; and we shall pray that the Spirit of God may glorify Christ through these windows, which will reveal him as Saviour and Guide’

During this series we will seek to reflect the aim of Mr Challacombe’s prayer. Using research that we have undertaken, we will explore what we know about the human stories behind the windows. This is to serve the greater aim of reflecting upon the biblical truths that they display and pondering how these truths can further shape and impact upon our lives.

Particularly when it comes to the Old Testament, it is easy for Christians to know the Bible as collection of isolated stories rather than having any handle on its nature as a coherent narrative. The Bible Project is a brilliant collection of videos aiming to help Christians grasp ‘the bigger picture’ within which the contents of the Bible makes their greatest sense. During this series, we will use these videos to help us grasp the shape and message of the books in the early part of the Old Testament. The sermons that follow will aim to provide greater clarity on the ‘bigger picture’ of each book so that we can all move forward in how we approach and understand the Bible and apply its content to our lives.

Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ stand at the heart of our Christian faith. However, it is easy for there to be large parts of both the Easter story and its implications for us today that we fail to understand. Too often these questions remain unanswered because we are too embarrassed to ask them. Across all of our services during April, we will seek to ask a series of searching questions about the story of Easter and its meaning. The aim is to strengthen our faith and discipleship by developing our understanding of how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ changed the world forever.

Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ stand at the heart of our Christian faith. However, it is easy for there to be large parts of both the Easter story and its implications for us today that we fail to understand. Too often these questions remain unanswered because we are too embarrassed to ask them. Across all of our services during April, we will seek to ask a series of searching questions about the story of Easter and its meaning. The aim is to strengthen our faith and discipleship by developing our understanding of how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ changed the world forever.