July 2017 Dear Friends, Below is part of my address to this year’s AGM: I have been struggling in the last couple of weeks to know what to say this morning. It would be misleading to stand here and pretend all is well with the church and the world. It is clearly not. Recent terrorist […]
Russell’s monthly newsletter – May 2017
May 2017 Dear Friends, Sitting in our favourite ‘watering-hole’ looking out at the Mediterranean Sea whilst on holiday in Spain after Easter, life seemed calm and stress free. Then Ross announced, having seen the news pop up on one his social media apps, that the Prime Minister was going to call a snap election and […]
Russell’s March 2017 Newsletter
March 2017 Dear Friends, A few weeks ago, in the depths of a cold January morning, someone confessed to me: ‘I can’t wait for spring’. I had to agree with them. Leaving home on the school run entirely dependent on the car’s headlights to guide me, knowing that by the time Ross comes home at […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – February 2017
Dear Friends, According to Shakespeare ‘all the world’s a stage’. It is a good thing, for some, that the stage is not that for a lavish, big budget musical. Many of you will have heard of (or seen by now) La La Land – the modern day rom-com musical taking Hollywood by storm. Nominated for […]
Russell’s New Year’s newsletter
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 December Newsletter
December 2016 Dear Friends, 2016 will be remembered as a year of incredible change. Some of us will look back with personal joy at specific events but others still confuse and bewilder us. In the face of uncertainty the Church can seem irrelevant or powerless. But let us never forget that we have a great […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – November 2016
November 2016 Dear Friends, The board game Monopoly was always a family favourite but equally incredibly frustrating. Whilst it was always fun being the ‘top hat’ whizzing around the streets of London (or ending up in jail) it always brought out the worst in all of us. Not only did a game take absolutely hours, […]
Russell’s Newsletter – 20 October 2016
October 2016 Dear Friends, Amazingly for people of my generation, it is now 50 years since Gene Roddenberry first brought Star Trek to our TV screens and many of us were hooked pretty quickly on the exploits of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest as they journeyed into ‘space, the final frontier’. This summer the […]
Russell’s Newsletter – September 2016
September 2016 Dear Friends, It is a time of significant change for the Furley-Smiths with Cameron, our eldest son, going off to university. It doesn’t seem possible that he has already reached this milestone in his life. Time really does ‘fly by’. It is also true to say that life is constantly changing for all […]
Russell’s Newsletter – June 2016
Dear Friends, This month, on the weekend of 10th-12th June, the country and Commonwealth celebrate the Queen’s Official 90th birthday. However one views the constitutional monarchy that she represents and although our own denomination proudly states that “we believe Christ gives his Church a government distinct from the state” and that the Church “must serve […]