Category Archives: Pastors Blog

Check out this music video from Josiah Gillespie. Josiah is originally from Grace Community Church, Looe where his dad John is the pastor and a friend of mine.

Dear Friends,
We have enjoyed a typical British summer. I learned on the radio today that it has been the coldest, cloudiest and wettest for fifteen years; not bad eh! For all that we had a lovely summer break taking in body surfing off the Cornish coast, a Christian house-party in Shropshire, watching a Shakespeare play in Stratford upon Avon and ended up with the holiday makers favourite; decorating back home!
Being at home during my holiday gave me the chance to attend a prayer meeting at PBC simply for the blessing of attending; and what a blessing it was. Ably led by one of the younger men in the church with another younger man giving an excellent Bible talk and a good number of praying people present. I believe that joining together with other Christians in prayer each week is one of the great privileges of the Christian life and for me it is a highlight. Over the last year numbers have crept up at our prayer meetings. Our annual call to prayer saw almost 40 of us gathered. I look forward to the day when we run out of chairs!
Looking back over the summer I was thrilled that some of our younger men were preaching in our pulpit. It is vital for us to nurture and train the next generation (and the ones after that). I am so pleased that we have taken this on board as a church and God has blessed by giving us some eager and godly younger men.
As we go forward into the Autumn we face some great opportunities to develop the life, ministry and outreach of our church. These will be in addition to our regular events reaching people of all ages from toddlers to seniors.
We hope to launch the new SOUL course, a video based presentation of the Gospel in an informal setting targeted at late teens and twenties.
There are plans in hand to start a new interactive Bible Study on Sunday afternoons. A bit like the Wednesday morning study this will be a chance to look in more depth at the Bible, discover what it means and how it applies to our lives
There will be a baptismal service giving people who have become Christians an opportunity to declare their faith and the chance for us to celebrate God’s gracious saving work in their lives and to invite our friends and contacts.
The 20s and 30s group is relaunching to provide a focus for the growing number of people of that age group in our church.
It is our heart desire to see two new full time staff/ministry appointments.
We want to take on an Assistant Pastor to “multiply word ministry, train existing members to utilise their gifts, and to encourage increased church participation in outreach”. Now that word is out that we are looking, we’ve heard from one or two young men who may be interested. The challenge for us is to ‘step up to the plate’ with commitments of funding and accommodation.
A similar challenge faces us in our desire to work together with churches in the Torfaen and District Gospel Partnership to appoint a schools worker for the Borough. Here we need to find someone with experience in schools work who can take the work on from where it has got to and build it up to the next level.
And on the bricks and mortar front this year (2010/11) should see the start and finish of the Kitchen and Toilets refurbishment bringing our facilities up to disability discrimination act standards and giving us an attractive and safe hall and kitchen environment. The challenge in 2011/12 will be to create attractive events using our new facilities for training and evangelism.
All this is why I began by writing about the prayer meeting. Prayer is vital to all our plans and goals. Unless God is at work we are wasting our time and God has chosen to draw us into his plans through prayer. So I close with an appeal. To those of you who already come to the prayer meeting, keep on coming and keep on praying. To those of you who don’t come regularly, please start coming, make the prayer meeting a priority in your diary.
Yours in Christ Jesus,
John Edmonds

This video based on a short talk by Tim Keller is a great explanation of how the Bible is all about Jesus.

At the recent Carey Family Conference I attended a seminar on Christians and Culture. The speaker, Tom King, showed us how creative arts/media reflect the popular thinking of their day. Thus Shakespeare’s Hamlet reflects a broadly Christian view of humanity with key characters knowing that they were created for something higher and more glorious than was seen in their experience, TS Elliot’s ‘The wasteland’ displays a modern view of humanity; trying to make pattern and meaning out of fragments, Samuel Beckett’s ‘The Unnameable’ shows a disintegrating self and lifestyle in a way which provokes laughter in a typically post modern way and bang up to date the film ‘Inception’ explores an old dilemma of the relationship between dream and reality in thoroughly post modern way mixing and matching various popular philosophies.
Tom’s presentation reminded me of the writings and films of Francis Schaeffer. It was an enjoyable and thought provoking seminar.
The discussion time raised an unexpected line of debate. One or two people were clearly uncomfortable with the idea of Christians engaging with and enjoying creative art and media. The most extreme position expressed was that only the Bible is “noble, right, pure lovely and admirable” (Phil 4:8) so it’s wrong for Christians to appreciate anything else. The seminar slot wasn’t long enough to contain this topic and discussions carried on late into the evening. It certainly set me thinking.
It seems to me that the answer to this dilemma is found in the early chapters of Genesis in the Bible’s teaching about creation and humanity.
The creation is given to humanity to rule (Gen 1:28) and to enjoy (1 Tim 4:4). This is true of creation after the fall as well as before, as is clear from 1 Tim 4:4 “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving”. Th fall does however affect the creation and so our enjoyment of it is filtered through this biblical lens. The creation has been subjected to frustration (Rom 8:20). So it is right and proper for Christians to appreciate and enjoy creation; to become explorers, researchers, scientists, mountain climbers, cavers, bird watchers all terrain bikers and so on just for the joy of it, enjoying God’s good creation.
So what about human creative arts and media?
here we turn to human beings made in the image of God (Gen 1:26,27). In context this must mean, at least, that human beings are creative. Thus when we appreciate and enjoy human creativity in art, media, music and so on we are appreciating and enjoying the image of God in humanity, and this is to God’s glory and praise. When I visit the Musee d’Orsay in Paris to see the paintings of the impressionists and I am struck by the creative brilliance of the artist, I am seeing the image of God in that person and it makes me realise how fantastic God is. The same can be said when I go to a concert to see one of my favourite bands, Feeder, play live. I am overawed by the creativity and the way words and music describe and reflect the human condition and that sense of wonder turns to praise of God who made human beings so ‘fearfully and wonderfully” (Psalm 139:14). Yet here also we must take proper account of the fall. The image of God in people is marred by their fallenness and this is reflected in their creative art. When I read Albert Camus I see the image of God in brilliant writing but I also sense the fallenness of humanity as I am led into a story of hopeless despair. And as I listen to an album by Lilly Allen suddenly amidst words and music which speak of beauty, love and hope I am assaulted by a message of depravity and moral ambivalence. So in the same event I rejoice in the image of a creative God in a fellow human being and weep at our fallenness which can only find hope in a redeeming Saviour.
It seems to me, therefore, that it is right and good (biblical) for a Christian to engage with, appreciate and enjoy creative art and media (both what is fancifully and rather pejoratively, these days called ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.)
Finally I think this reflection also shows us how, if not where, we should draw the line. Some creative art is so marred by human fallenness that it is almost impossible to see the image of God at all. Thus when we look all we see is the ugliness of sinful scarred humanity. Phil 4:8 (“whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things”) should be taken seriously. Each Christian must decide for themselves with a good conscience before God where the line needs to be drawn. It is not our place to draw lines for each other nor to try and push others to cross their own lines. Surely that is what Rom 14&15 is all about.
Thus it was with a clear conscience that I went from Carey to Stratford upon Avon and enjoyed watching Julius Caeser at the RSC Courtyard Theatre and came home to catch up on Eastenders!

It’s back to work after the summer break. For us it was a break with a difference.

The first week was spent in our caravan on a caravan club site near Hayle in Cornwall. It was time for rest, reading, coastal walks and surfing the waves on the body board.

After a relaxing week we set off for our first ever visit to the Carey Family Conference in Cloverly Hall, Shropshire. I was the main speaker at this event giving five talks from Monday to Friday. I decided to give talks taken from the longer ‘Help for Troubled Souls series which I preached at PBC a few years ago. As a preacher I always pray that God will help me as I chose what to speak on. I believe he answers that prayer even though I don’t always see direct evidence to confirm it. We live by faith not by sight. This was one of those unusual occasions when God gave me many encouragements to believe this set of talks was just right for the occasion. On the first evening two days before i was due to give my first talk one of the regulars, also a minister like me, took me aside over a late night cup of tea and asked me if I had been told what to speak on. When I I told him ‘no’ he sat back with a look of amasement and said ‘you will not believe how relevant these talks will be to many who are here’. And so it proved to be as many conversations during the week showed. It is a tremendous and humbling privilege to serve a living God who speaks through his word. The talks were recorded and although they are very similar to those preached at PBC I am in the process of uploading them to the website for those who would like to read them.

After our time at Cloverly we spent a few days in Stratford upon Avon which included seeing Julius Caesar at the RSC Courtyard Theatre. This a great play to watch and provided plenty of material for sara and me to chew over during long walks and sunny afternoons with a drink by the river but perhaps more of that in another entry.

For now I’m back at my desk starting to prepare for the coming Sunday confident that as I pray and prepare God will use his word to impact lives.

john ed