January 2017 Dear Friends, Nicola, Cameron and Ross join me in thanking you for all your good and kind wishes at Christmas and join me in sending you greetings for 2017. They didn’t put up blue plaques in Biblical times. If they did, there would have been one in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, ‘King […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – July 2021 – ‘United Reformed Church’s Vision2020 initiative – 10+ years on’
Dear Friends, In my report to the Annual Church Meeting, I referred to the United Reformed Church’s Vision2020 initiative launched over 10 years ago. I reminded myself – and, perhaps, you – that the programme included a list of priorities for mission with the challenge that, in each area, the denomination, including each local congregation, […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – June 2021 – ‘Trinity’
Dear Friends, Rawan Anani is a Palestinian artist whose colourful paintings evoke her love for her homeland and its culture. Recently, ‘Roots’ magazine drew my attention to her recently painted ’Gaza in my heart’ which shows three women standing in the waters off Gaza closely drawn together and set against a backcloth of a traditional […]
Russell’s Newsletter – Christian Aid May 2021
Dear Friends, For more than a generation, Christian Aid Week has been a primary focus during May. In one of the largest mobilisations of a volunteer work force anywhere, people from so many different backgrounds delivered envelopes to as many households in the country as possible and then returned to collect donations to bring hope […]
Russell’s Newsletter – April 2021
Dear Friends, A new day is dawning – thank God – even though this is the second Easter in a row we are having to celebrate in ‘lockdown’, unable to sing our Easter ‘Alleluias’ in church together. However, as we reflected last year, a lockdown Easter gives us an opportunity to identify a little more […]
Russell’s Newsletter – March 2021
Dear Friends, A week is “a long time in politics”. If that is true, how long is a “year living with a pandemic? 12 months ago, Nicola and I had just returned from a wonderful week in Spain. We were a bit surprised there was no one at Gatwick checking our temperature as we passed […]
Russell’s Newsletter – February 2021
Dear Friends, You will all be familiar with the popular quiz question designed to catch you out: How many months have 28 days? The answer, of course, is all of them. February is unique in that it is the only month to have only 28 days (unless it is a leap year, when it has […]
Russell’s New Year’s (2021) Newsletter
Dear Friends, Never, in my lifetime, have people longed for one year to end and a new one to begin. 2020 has been a year to forget, but a year we will never forget. So now our hopes are pinned on 2021. However, a new year merely marks an arbitrary way of measuring time that, […]
Russell’s Newsletter – February 2021
Dear Friends, You will all be familiar with the popular quiz question designed to catch you out: How many months have 28 days? The answer, of course, is all of them. February is unique in that it is the only month to have only 28 days (unless it is a leap year, when it has […]
Russell’s New Year’s (2021) Newsletter
Dear Friends, Never, in my lifetime, have people longed for one year to end and a new one to begin. 2020 has been a year to forget, but a year we will never forget. So now our hopes are pinned on 2021. However, a new year merely marks an arbitrary way of measuring time that, […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – December 2020
Dear Friends, I am tempted to misquote Mr Spock in Star Trek: “It’s Christmas, Jim, but not as we know it!” Most of this year has been unpredictable and abnormal. The next few weeks are going to be no different. Families are facing awkward conversations about who is going to be in whose ‘Christmas 3-household […]