St. Joseph’s Church, Merry Hill, Wolverhampton

Glynn Watkin speaks on Mark 10:35-45. Unfortunately the audio is not quite complete, for reasons beyond your webmaster’s control, but it’s not far off.

As ever, listen here…or pick it up on iTunes. (Please also see the Help page on this site about this.)

A few of us went to see Fish Tank at the cinema – the tiny studio screen at the Lighthouse – a couple of weeks ago. It’s a remarkable film -  one girl’s experiences of vulnerability, pain, violence of all kinds, isolation and determination, in a sink estate in Essex (Barking, I think). For me I thought above all it showed how an individual remains able to connect at some level in a world where there is so little of anything to forge connections from. It’s a world devoid of anything directly spiritual. Just imagine what she could be if she knew something of Jesus and had the power of the Holy Spirit to give her something to strength her; if you’re reading this without those things please accept from this writer at least their reality.

On the way out I quipped “So, it’s back to Penn, then”. And it was indeed the case that the three of us there, all St Jo’s regulars, don’t even live in Merry Hill. Perhaps that difference is gave Fish Tank some of its impact but it brought home to me just how easy it is to be remote from a different world that is just far enough away from my day-to-day life to be invisible. It’s closer still in the area that St Jo’s aims to directly serve but I fail to engage with it. I’m probably scared of it, to be honest. Fish Tank pretty much terrified me, on one level.

Going to see a film and gaining a bit of an insight into that world, and giving me some understanding of how people do or don’t function within it, is all well and good – and has given me a better basis for more substantial prayer. But what next?

David Newsome speaks on Romans 12:1-8, with the theme “A Living Sacrifice”.

As ever, listen here…or pick it up on iTunes. (Please also see the Help page on this site about this.)

Sorry it’s taken a few weeks to put this up – but no audio from Sunday 4th October as it was Harvest with no sermon as such at the 10.30am service.

Ness to her friends Tobin speaks on Hebrews 13:1-8;, with the theme “One God in a time of change”.

As ever, listen here…or pick it up on iTunes. (Please also see the Help page on this site about this.)