New photos – end of term

I’ve just uploaded a few new photos of Pauline and Claire-Lise’s end of term celebrations at the Ecole Moser. See the photos to the right of this column, or follow the link.

Swiss education and the Ecole Moser

In the early years when we lived in Switzerland, it was not unusual for us to hear fellow expats talk negatively about the local school system. We tended to differ as we had not encountered any serious issues with it. However our views changed as our daughters grew older.
The system is highly selective [...]

The Gospel Coalition

This is a new coalition in the US that is seeking basically to call churches back to biblical faithfulness. They have just launched their website which turns out to be rich in resources – including video talks from their recent conference, including messages from Don Carson and Tim Keller, as well as a collection [...]

New Horizon 2007

For most of the past 12 years we have spent a week of our summer holidays at a Bible conference in Coleraine.  It’s soon that time of year again, with the difference that we will be living round the corner from the event, with our move just a few days before the conference starts.  So [...]

What is the Gospel | TheResurgence

Mark Driscoll (I know he is not everyone’s cup of tea, but who is?) has news of a recent conference involving Don Carson and Tim Keller, helping to put together a statement on gospel and ministry.  Mark’s site (http://www.theresurgence.com/) is going to carry material from the conference – they have already made a start with [...]

“Need a pastor friend from Europe”

One of the interesting behind the scenes things about some of the blogs on the Internet is the ability to look at things like statistics or to see what kinds of things people are looking for when they land on the site.  For example, if I have recently uploaded a sermon about Moses and someone [...]

Happiest Day of the Year!!!

My daughter pointed out on her blog that yesterday was meant (in Britain at least) to be the happiest day of the year. Read her article by following the link to her blog.
♥♥♥Gemma’s Blog♥♥♥: Happy Happiest Day of the Year!!!

Swiss transport

Normally you would say that you could set your watch by the timing of a Swiss train. Sometimes things go wrong though. Today I took a “train day” – occasionally I buy a day pass to travel somewhere in the country; at times these have been great days of reading and thinking. [...]

The India Trip

Over the past few years at Westlake we have had a young Canadian student, Anne-Lydie Bolay – “a Canadian farm girl turned Swiss seamstress student” (in her own words). For some time she has been inspired by the idea of using her skills (she has been learning the art of being a seamstress) as [...]

Memories and lunch with some good people

Today Pauline and I had lunch with two of the pillar couples of La Fraternelle – the Swiss church whose building has allowed Westlake to grwo and develop over the past 17 years. One of the couples (the hosts) are in their 80s and the others a few years younger. Our hosts are [...]

Jack Bauer and 24

A couple of times recently in sermons I have referred to Jack Bauer. Some people know who I am talking about and others don’t. If you don’t know, he is a kind of superhero who stars in the hit series “24“. I’ve wondered whether Samson might be a Bible character not unlike [...]

Seventeen years, a Swiss cowbell and 700 sermons

We are into the final month of our 17 years spent in Nyon at Westlake Church. This evening we had almost 300 people at a party to say thank you and good bye. As well as a crowd of current Westlakers we had a few guests from other churches and some folk actually [...]

Nehemiah 3 and the work of Christ

This morning I took Mark Driscoll running (via IPOD) as he preached through Nehemiah 3.  No big deal on the typology of the gates – more of a practical emphasis on leadership and work.  One of the good things about his message was his desire to try to end up by getting to the gospel.  [...]

English theatre – “Strange Inheritance”

Last night Pauline produced a short play with her advanced English class. It was called “Strange Inheritance” and is from a collection of plays written for young people by John Murray. It’s a clever piece about a group of relatives called together to discover the contents of the will of a long lost [...]

Nyon’s shoreline

The header at the top of this page shows the coastline where we are moving to. Meantime, here is a photo of Nyon’s own shoreline.

Pauline the play producer

This evening Pauline produced a play with some of her advanced students at her school in Nyon. I’ll get a few photos up tomorrow, but meantime, here is Pauline receiving some well-earned bouquets of flowers.

Quotes from Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams figured on this week’s cover of Time Magazine. The main focus is on Dr Williams’ struggle to hold together the widely differing factions of Anglicanism on the issue of homosexuality.
Here are two helpful quotes – which both stand even if detached from the issue at hand.
The first was in response to what [...]

Photos on flickr

As well as developing this new blog, I’ve been setting up some of my photos on flickr – it’s a fascinating website where all kinds of people can post their photos. If you want to see what I have uploaded so far, you can click here.

Coastal Pastor

I’ve been setting up this new blog over the past day or so. For one thing it’s free and the name change will be a better reflection of my new situation as we will be heading to Portstewart Baptist Church in a few weeks where I will be taking up the post of Senior [...]

Above us only sky????

New York has several airports – best known is JFK, named for JF Kennedy. Belfast chose to name one of its airports as the George Best Airport to mark Ireland’s greatest footballer. Liverpool chose John Lennon, and they added the slogan – above us only sky. Not bad when you think of an airport. [...]

Everton

A lot of people who have little sense of history dismiss Everton as a club on a level with teams like… (well, I don’t want to insult anyone on the Internet) – but we tend to get written off as some of the little people.
If you are interested, you ought to know these things about [...]

Everton and church!

One of Everton’s claims to fame is the fact that they are the first club to have a church on its grounds. In one of the corners of the ground sits St Luke the Evangelist’s church. It’s minister, Harry Ross operates in some capacity as club chaplain. During my visit I tried [...]

Goodison Park

On Friday morning I was booked in for a guided tour of Goodison Park. There were five other sad people who had signed up for the event at the same time, including a guy who was probably about my age and who had come along with his father who was celebrating his birthday the [...]

Travels

This past week I had a few days in the North East of England. I flew over to Liverpool on Wednesday morning, took the train to Manchester on Thursday morning and watched the first day of the Test Match between England and the West Indies – a day that turned out, apparently, to be [...]

Sunday sermon – joint service

This morning we joined together in the village of Founex with the congregations of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Geneva and Crossroads church. These are two congregations with which we have had good contacts over the years. Westlake was started by several families from the Baptist Church who were living in the [...]

The leadership journey of Moses