Bishop’s Message

SOME sermons from the distant past may sound strange to our ears today. Take, for instance, John Wesley’s sermon, “On Obedience to Pastors”. Imagine you were in the congregation when he preached that sermon. You would have heard these words: “I would now apply myself in a more particular manner to you who desire me […]

THIS year Methodists all over the world celebrate the 300th birth anniversary of Charles Wesley – God’s poetic gift to the Methodist movement and the larger Body of Christ. Charles was a gifted poet and song smith, the psalmist who inspired the early Methodists to have faith in Christ, and to go on to Christian […]

The Bishop’s Easter Message Truths of Good Friday and Easter must be internalised in our personal experience THE rhythm of Christian worship has a pattern. It is shaped after the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. The church year closely follows the life of Jesus – His birth, death, resurrection, ascension, His divine […]

THERE is a growing focus on prayer in many parts of the Church, and this is most encouraging. But how does one pray, especially in our highly stressed and feverishly frantic modern society? In one sense this problem is not new. Even in the ancient world, when the early Church was just emerging, people did feel […]

A Christmas Message from our Bishop ✰ Jesus came not to help angels but human beings ✰ It was because God wanted to save us from sin and death that He had to become a man IN THE cold Judean night, the new mother kept looking lovingly at her fresh-born son. The innocent eyes of the […]

THE past few months have been a difficult time for our Church and for me personally. Anonymous letters have been circulating about the bishop’s remuneration package, making various allegations against the Church and its leaders. Newspaper articles followed. As a result, the Commissioner of Charities enquired the Church about this. We answered all their questions […]

DOES God intervene in the minutest details of our lives? Can we say that God knows all things, is interested in both the big as well as the small matters in life, but that He does not necessarily intervene in every situation, according to our wishes or expectations, because He is guided by His higher […]

JESUS encountered many individuals during His earthly ministry. One such person was the unnamed Samaritan woman who had the great privilege of meeting Jesus alone at a well in Sychar in Samaria (Jn. 4:4-42). Jesus invited her into the kingdom of God and she gladly accepted His gracious invitation. In the course of their conversation, Jesus also taught her about true worship. We can […]

HAVE you ever asked these questions: How does God manage to listen to all the prayers of all the people praying to Him? How does He keep up with all the prayers directed to Him? How can He respond to them all at the same time? Does He have some assistants to help Him? We may […]

IF WE were really to follow Jesus, we would discover a difficult path – no, an impossible path (except for the grace of God). The crowds that followed Jesus did so for various reasons, most of them having to do with their happiness and comfort, happiness as reduced to creature comforts. On one occasion, after Jesus […]

DON and Caroline Richardson went to live with the Sawi tribe, a Stone Age people in Irian Jaya, in the 1960s. There they learned the language and tried to understand the customs of the people. The Sawi were illiterate and were ignorant about iron; their tools were made of stone and wood. They also had some […]

IN THINKING through about the reality and ministry of the Holy Spirit, Christians sometimes do what they should not. They separate what God has put together, often leading to distorted versions of Christianity and Christian discipleship. One connection that we should hold on to is the relationship between Jesus and the Spirit. The baptism of […]