This month at the 6.30 service we are trying some ‘Psalm surfing’. This isn’t some kind of spiritual activity requiring the use of a board and wetsuit (though that would be fantastic!) but rather a way of praying and singing through a Psalm together. The Psalms are a kind of ancient hymn book, and the words contained within them have inspired hymn and song writers through the centuries. There are not many Psalms that you can read without being left with a tune forming in your head as you notice the ways in which its words have been used more recently in worship. The Psalms are rich with emotion. There are Psalms for good and bad times, words of celebration and words of despair. Most recently, Psalm 31 has......

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Those with long memories might remember Holy week events a few years ago. We turned the local area into Jerusalem, and met in various different locations imagining what it must have looked like “on the ground” according to maps of Jerusalem. We walked through Holy Week in real time, and in the sort of geographical distances and directions from the time of Jesus. So Radbrook Green became where the Upper Room was situated, the area around the Meet Place became Gethsemane, and Holy Trinity Church became the temple complex. I still remember meeting on Easter morning in Shrewsbury Cemetery and celebrating the resurrection from there. I felt I entered into the story of Holy Week more vividly than I have ever done before. I wonder what you might be......

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What makes a society Christian? Last week I was in the Balkans visiting family. We stayed much of the time in the town of Ohrid in North Macedonia. Ohrid has many churches – 365 of them – “one for every day of the year,” as someone has said, and some are very beautiful. Not all have services every Sunday but their presence spoke of their undergirding Christian faith. I felt I was amongst friends there. On the last full day, we drove over the border into Kosovo and to the town where our daughter and family have been living and working with a local church over the past four years. During lockdown this little church community has been working hard to adapt a building as their new church centre,......

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This year, I have the great joy of leading a Lent group with a few children of upper primary school age, exploring some themes in the film “The Greatest Showman”. In our latest session, we considered how the circus performers became a family, joined by their common experiences of being different and outcast by society and how as they grew as a family, they sustained one another. The children shared their own thoughts on why family is important, and I was moved to hear them describe themselves as part of our church family, where they are loved and accepted no matter what! Here at Trinity Churches, we often use the phrase “God’s Amazing Family” but isn’t it great to know that this is not just a label we apply......

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How much should ‘living’ cost? Must I be money measured? Or perhaps treasured by the God of heaven? God values us highly. The CEO of Iceland said yesterday on BBC news that the cost of food has stayed steady in recent years and is perhaps moving towards its real cost, but were we ready for the leap? The ‘Money Saving Expert’ Martin Lewis says he is ‘out of tools’ to help people save money during this time of high inflation. The cost of fuel is higher than ever and this all comes while we seek to recover from a pandemic that isn’t quite over. According to the shadow chancellor people are ‘worried sick’. I can understand why. I wonder what worries you are currently carrying. I wonder what we......

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You have probably heard the statement ‘We don’t go to church… we are the Church!’ The point being that church is not just a building, but it is a group of people dedicated to following Jesus. Better still, it is a family. Over the last few weeks I have been watching the reboot of ‘Lost in Space’ on Netflix. The Robinson family, along with a whole host of other astronauts, get knocked off course and end up being, you guessed it, lost in space. The Robinsons pull together, pool their knowledge and skills, and consistently save their fellow travellers. Now into the third season it has got to the point where everyone looks to the Robinsons for a solution to their problems. A few times people have even said,......

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It’s hard to know where to begin with some of the things going on at the moment. We woke up last Thursday morning to find war in Europe as Ukraine is being attacked by Russia. COVID continues to have an impact in many nations across the world, and the inevitable weariness and instability after two years of upheaval. Closer to home last week saw flooding yet again in Shrewsbury, and the heartache of businesses, homes and churches in our town under inches of water. We’ve also seen our local hospital under the spotlight again in a critical Panorama report on the BBC. My BBC podcast newsfeed this morning even featured Shrewsbury in a ten episode series on ‘conspiracy theories’… It’s no wonder the Psalmist talks about earthquakes, tidal-waves, wars......

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