Helping People to Meet God • Make Friends • Grow in Faith

Vicar’s Blog (Page 20)

Church Bells

CHURCH BELLS We lived in Switzerland for 2½ years, where I studied for my doctorate at the University of Bern. We lived in Thun, a city by a lake. We decided to come back to New Zealand, where I would complete my studies at St John’s College in Auckland. New Zealand is a beautiful country, but so is Switzerland and it was…

Tim Writes …

You may have noticed that I use the pulpit when I preach. That is not so that I can shout at the congregation, but rather because of the symbolism of the pulpit and the heritage it represents. Some preachers prefer not to use the pulpit because they seem to talk down to people. And yet, the pulpit is actually a symbol that…

Changing Circumstances

We all experience change in our lives, don’t we, in fact it’s unavoidable and seems to come at set points in our lives.  Having recently become ‘empty nesters’ my wife and I are experiencing no small amount of change in our lives right now!  Earlier in the year our son moved to Wellington for work, and last month our daughter moved to…

Talking Past Each Other

Hillary and I were sitting in a café the other day when she spotted this quote on a TV screen: “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.”  I thought that was quite profound.  It’s actually a quote from business management guru, Stephen Covey.  It kind of goes with that old saying that we have…

Doing the Impossible

When I was a young lad growing up in England I had many dreams about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  First I wanted to be an astronaut, after all, the Apollo missions were in full swing, Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon, and Star Wars was a huge hit in the cinemas, all of which had set…

Created for Work

During the early 1990’s I had the misfortune to be made redundant from my Job, I was a service manager at a motorcycle dealer at the time.  I loved that Job as it combined my passion for motorcycles and the necessity of gainful employment.  This lead to a prolonged period where over the next four years I was made redundant three times…