Christchurch Clevedon - Sermons

Christchurch, a church in Clevedon, Somerset, keeps a large archive of its preaching, and the first thing to notice is that the pulpit changes hands. Different preachers bring different habits. In one recording a newly arrived vicar starts with a prayer, then tells the congregation they have got themselves a new vicar and asks what he is going to be like. He praises the church's care for toddlers, its work on mental and emotional well-being and its intervention work with children in schools. Then comes the harder point: those ministries should also invite people to drink God's living water, an image taken from Jesus and the woman at the well. Another sermon belongs to Nick Moxon, a Methodist minister in Portishead, who explains, with some humour, that he was not simply dragged in as he happened to walk past. His subject is Paul's letter to the Philippians, written in prison, and the joy Paul keeps returning to despite the cost of following Jesus. He sets that beside the rich young ruler, who walked away crestfallen. Everyday objects and pictures do much of the teaching. A glass of squash goes up, the room votes half full or half empty by show of hands, and the point lands at the empty tomb, where Mary, Peter and a second disciple see the same thing in different ways. Along the way the preacher explains that a tomb is another word for a grave, a sign of how plainly the language is kept. In a sermon on Jesus entering Jerusalem, the crowd is read as a political demonstration, 'Hosanna' is glossed as 'save now', and the comparison offered is a chant outside a hospital for more money. The preacher then turns the cry toward being saved from the consequences of sin rather than from any government. Testimony carries weight too. One preacher places the night he met the young woman he married beside a second encounter, at work, that he says revolutionised his life. He recalls being told, 'Ken, it's not where you're from, it's where you're going that counts', asks whether the congregation are caterpillars, cocoons or butterflies, and ends by urging the church to ring its bells and tell Clevedon that Jesus is alive. The Holy Spirit recurs across the recordings, from closing prayers asking the Spirit to come, to a sermon on Acts and the Spirit opening and closing doors for the earliest followers of Jesus. That preacher says plainly there is no easy formula for putting it into practice. Titles such as 'Rejoicing in Christ', 'Knowing Christ' and 'A Life-Transforming Encounter' sketch the range: joy, knowing Jesus, lives turned around. What a listener gets is one congregation's preaching with its local texture, the town named from the pulpit, a circuit farewell mentioned in passing, a band invited back up at the close.