"Living in community with people who are different to us, however we define or experience our own normality, takes effort and commitment. And Paul’s “poetic ode to love” was not written to celebrate the unifying love already accomplished in the community. It was a call to action. A call to love despite difference. A call to resist division and create something new. A call to grow up and start behaving like adults rather than children, discovering that difference need not divide, and that fear need not dictate behaviour." Read more

The message of the cross is an ugly message of suffering, a controversial message of cosmic disruption, and a dangerous message of political and social revolution. And there is nothing that can, or should, be done by preachers to sanitise or beautify the shock, the horror, the ‘scandal’ as Paul puts it, of the word of the cross. Read more

Whether we are challenging the narratives of nationalism that lend legitimacy to state-sanctioned violence, or the cultures of religious exclusion that lead some to think themselves unworthy of God’s love and acceptance, or the unspoken collusions of class that declare some lives less worthy than others, the proclamation of Jesus as Lord remains as politically, economically, and socially disruptive as it ever was in the first century. Read more

So here at the beginning of Acts, with the post-Easter disciples also in lockdown, waiting for things to change, I wonder what they can teach us? What lockdown lessons of discipleship can we learn from the first disciples? Read more

Resurrection is not release from suffering, nor is it an excuse from mortality. Rather, it is the invitation to live anew, to start again, and again, and again; to experience freedom and hope in the midst of restriction and despair. Read more

Sometimes, you can’t rush to the happy ending. Sometimes, you just have to stay with the pain, and the suffering, and the death. Sometimes you just have to wait. And this is not easy. Read more

The Kingdom is Coming A sermon for Palm Sunday 2020 "I wonder… what we are applauding today, that we will shout crucify at tomorrow? Can we see through the culture of the quick fix? Can we find a way past our national obsession with technology as the path to salvation? Can we inhabit a commitment to a better and more sustainable way of being human?" Read more

Where people die, God is. Where people suffer, God is. Where people live in fear, God is. Where people are victimised, God is. Where people are faithless, God is. Where people doubt, God is. Where people betray, God is. Where people repent, God is. Where people love one another, God is. Where people make sacrifices for others, God is. Where people risk their safety for the lives of others, God is. Read more

What if our way out of the trap that lies before us, is neither quiescent complicity to the state, nor extremist politics of social revolution, but developing - actively working at - a culture of generous, loving care, for those who are disadvantaged in our world and society; coupled with a commitment to speak out, to challenge those political and economic systems that impoverish the poor and enrich the rich. Read more

"Mark’s challenge is to notice those places where women are marginalised, oppressed, and violated, and to take action to bring equality not only by raising up the weak and the vulnerable, but by undermining the structures and patterns of leadership that perpetuate dysfunctional and abusive gender roles." Read more

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A sermon for Transfiguration Sunday 2020. 'The finding of true, eternal, spiritual life involves losing of one’s ‘self’ in something greater than oneself. In Christ, God is drawing our souls to life, gifting us resurrection, and showing us a new way of seeing, and being, and doing.' Read more

The new world of the kingdom of heaven is not a world of ideological quarantine, spiritual decontamination chambers, or ritualised holding cells. It’s not a world where whispered traditions get to exclude or isolate the vulnerable or the different. It is rather a place of radical forgiveness and all-embracing love, where purity comes as a gift of God, available to all without distinction. Read more

The path Christ calls us to is the risky, difficult way, of intentionally listening to those voices which make us most uncomfortable, because they challenge our preconceptions. Read more

'It is a matter of great shame that Christian congregations have themselves become bastions of exclusion and segregation,vfrom the denial of ordination to women and those who are LGBTQI, to the scriptural justification of gender stereotypes that distort men and oppress women, to the collusion with society in the scapegoating of otherson the grounds of socio-economic standing, ethnicity, or other innate characteristics Read more

Jesus’ strategy for bringing healing and wholeness to the land and the people was the casting out of demons of exclusion, and the declaring to be clean of that which was previously considered unclean. Read more

“Growth will take place most effectively when we play our part in preparation and in the removal of the obstacles to growth, whilst allowing God to play his part in bringing growth, health, fruit, and harvest.” Read more

"Simply telling individuals that they must repent of their personal sins to be acceptable to God and God’s people is a distortion of the forgiveness that should be shaping us together into communities of love, restoration, transformation and wholeness." - Simon Woodman Read more

"Spiritual warfare is not so much a battle between Good and Evil, as it is a battle against the human tendency to take God’s good creation and mess it up. The casting out of the demonic is the restoration of a person to normality." - Simon Woodman Read more

"The wild beasts and angels in the wilderness with Jesus and Satan give us an insight into the nature of Jesus’ ministry as it will unfold over the coming years, as an apocalyptic battle between good and evil, with him coming to the world to cast out evil, and to bring release from those powers that oppress and distort humanity." - Simon Woodman preaching at Bloomsbury, 29 December 2019. Read more

The move from priesthood to prophecy is the move from ritual to action. Faith will no longer be based upon the remembrance of what God has done in times gone by, but upon what God is doing by his grace in the present. Read more

At our Carol Celebration on Friday (the day the election result was announced) Simon gave a short sermon on Herod. Read more

"The comfort proclaimed by Isaiah to the exiles in Babylon was no shallow Pollyanna-ish message of hope. Rather, it was a comfort based on the faithfulness of God. Because even if God’s people are unfaithful to God, God remains Faithful to them." - Simon Woodman. Read more

Within the Christian story, the hope of Jeremiah is fulfilled in Jesus, who embodies God’s righteousness and justice, bringing hope to all those whose lives are lost in despair. Read more

"John invites his readers to see themselves as citizens of the new Jerusalem, as citizens of the dawning kingdom of God.He invites them to become participants with Christ in bringing this new city into being. New Jerusalem only becomes a reality when we live it into being, one day, one choice at a time." Read more

"The emphasis in Jesus’ parable is not on the pearl itself, it is on the act of seeking. The metaphor for the Kingdom here is not an object, but an action. The kingdom here is experienced through seeking, and finding, and sacrificing, and acting decisively." Read more

"John uses the metaphor of the millennium to provide his audience with the perspective they need to understand the relationship between martyrdom and victory in Christ. Death is not the end, death is not defeat, the martyrs are not lost to God, they reign with Christ. And every unjust death of martyr and victim is another nail in the eternal coffin of the beast." Simon Woodman preaching for Remembrance Sunday at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church. Read more

"While questions of justice remain unanswered, God will challenge us to reflect on social and ecclesiastical structures that fall short of the insight that we all, without exception, bear God's image."  The Revd Dr Karl Rutlidge, preaching at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on 3rd November 2019. Read more

"I have had challenges reconciling my Christian faith with my sexuality, and many people have believed that it was not possible for me to be a citizen of heaven because of my sexuality, and indeed the colour of my skin... But I just stick with Christ! "We have to stand for justice, for the value and importance of all people. Let us be the generation that brings about the end of discrimination of all kinds." - Revd Jide Macauley, preaching at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 27 October 2019 Read more

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a narrative of victimhood leading to policies of exclusion. It’s not a story of us-and-them. It’s not a story of us being good, and them being evil. Rather, it is a story of inclusion, of radical and disruptive intervention in the global ecosystems of violence. The Kingdom of Heaven is not the few faithful fish caught in someone else’s nasty net; it is the net itself, trawling the world and gathering everything in its path. Read more

"What is real madness? Perhaps it is when we declare that someone filled with the Spirit of God is fundamentally bad, mad, or disordered. Perhaps this is the unforgivable sin, and perhaps we commit it every time someone vulnerable or wounded is declared disordered." Read more

"It is in amplifying and advocating for the voiceless in our community that our part in being transformational good news for the poor really lies." - Lynne Cullens, preaching at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church as part of our series on 'Inclusive Church' Read more

"We are called to be good stewards of the grace of God. The gifts we have been given are to be given out.... again and again... be they physical, emotional or spiritual." - Luke Dowding Read more

"Do we have the bravery and humility to be followers as well as to lead? Where is God calling us to next?" - Dawn Cole-Savidge Read more

"To reduce Christ's life, teaching, death, and resurrection to the 'Great Commission', is to dismiss what the gospels are trying to teach us about how to be and make disciples." - Revd Dawn Cole-Savidge, preaching at Bloomsbury on 15th September 2019 Read more

'Redemption is not about going back to before the fallen world began, it is about realising that we are invited to share in the re-patterning of our world...' Read more

"The Book of Revelation gives us an image of empire as a self-destructive entity, that brings upon itself the fitting judgement for its idolatrous activities. How can we hear this warning for the empires of our time?" - Simon Woodman. Read more

"On occasions, churches have been tempted to pursue what is safe rather than what is right..." Read more

"What do we need to let go to obtain the joy of the kingdom of heaven? What are we carrying that saps the joy of life?" Read more

'The environmental devastation in the Book of Revelation is not personally targeted punishment aimed at those who have denied the lordship of Christ, neither is it God punishing the earth for its opposition to the kingdom of Christ. Rather, it is a warning to the nations of the effects of their ongoing investment in empire, in the hope that the nations of the earth will ‘repent’ and turn from their exploitative and destructive practices.' - Simon Woodman Read more

"We must include everybody, there is no opt out clause... because we are being shaped into the likeness of Christ's body" - Revd Glen Graham, preaching at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Inclusion and Disability, 4 August 2019 Read more

"The blood that flows from the wine-press represents the very real and bloody human consequences of humanity’s infatuation with the beast. This isn’t a picture of God doing violence to humans, it’s a picture of God’s judgement on the violence humans do to one another." - Simon Woodman Read more

"The kingdom of heaven is like a virus, which spreads throughout the body and against which even antivirals don’t work." - Simon Woodman preaching at the Bloomsbury Church Anniversary Service Read more

'I don’t want to call into question the historicity of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the Book of Revelation offers a slightly different take on the ark’s location.' - Simon Woodman Read more

"This is a story about God, about cake, about giving up, about being, about running away, about running out of ourselves, and about listening..." - Andy Fitchet Read more

"You don't have to be afraid, because God is not angry" - Dawn Cole-Savidge. What is your heart filled with? Read more

The kingdom of heaven is like a strand of DNA, so tiny only electron microscopes can see it; but it gives shape to all the glories of nature from the eye to the brain, from the rose to the mighty oak. Read more

"We have exchanged the ethic of the Spirit for laws set in stone, and in so doing have missed the fact that God has long gone on ahead of us, out there into the world beyond us, drawing all kinds of people to himself, and pouring out his Spirit again and again on all flesh." - Simon Woodman preaching at #BloomsburyBaptist Read more

As part of our series exploring what it means for us to be members of Inclusive Church, we were delighted to welcome as our guest preacher Rosemarie Davidson-Gotobed, National Minority Ethnic Vocations Officer for the Church of England. Read more

"Our prayers are ushering in the kingdom of God, one life at a time. A world in which a prayer to God has been offered, is a world in which a prayer to the Emperor has been denied. And if we can learn to turn our eyes from the lures of the empire in our world, with all its seductions an coercions, then we are also learning to turn our lives from the violence that the empire generates, and are bringing into being the peaceable kingdom of Christ for which we pray." - Simon Woodman. Read more

"With all of the scientific evidence mounting up, why is it so difficult for us to realise that we are facing an environmental crisis? We have to grapple with that sense of privilege that we believe we have, as human beings, over the rest of creation. We have to learn to see ourselves as part of this creation in a new way, and we have to learn to bring the language of community into our relationship with the created order in the same way that we live in community with one another. We need to learn what it means to live in community with the whole of creation." - Paul Martin Read more

"What if the good news of the gospel is that everyone is in? What if all things, all people, all creatures under heaven, fall within the universal, redeeming, and forgiving love of God? Read more

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"‘And your religion’s gone wrong too’, says God. ‘You think I want solemn assemblies, offerings and incense? You’re wrong! The worship I want is that you do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed... but you are failing in that, sinful nation! … What a useless vineyard, cut it down! Read more

"When we come to read Revelation today, we may find it helpful to do with John’s text what he did with his own scriptures. That is, to bring our own world to the world of the text, submitting our lives to its imaginative and transformatory effects, learning to see the world the way John saw it, and in so doing gaining heaven’s perspective on our own earthly situations." - Simon Woodman Read more

“Who we are is remembered by God, and held fast eternally by God as part of God’s creative, dynamic being. God remembers us, and everyone who has ever lived has a place in God’s mind. Nothing is lost, everything is redeemed, all sins are forgiven, and eternity is ours.” - Simon Woodman Read more

"All too often we live as though the 'good news' Jesus proclaimed was a message of middle class guilt and mild self-loathing, rather than one of triumph in the face of death, and joy in the face of sorrow. But there is good news to be found on Palm Sunday, and there is joy to be found in following Jesus as he marches with his followers to bring about a new world." - Simon Woodman, preaching at Bloomsbury on Palm Sunday Read more

'The journey to inclusion starts when we realise that the image of the black Christ, the female Christ, the gay or trans Christ, the homeless or disabled Christ, are not idolatrous perversions, but actually are authentic representations of the diversity of the body of Christ.' - Simon Woodman. Read more

"Many times when we love, we love other people in ways in which we like to be loved ourselves.[...] Love is never centered in me and what I want to do, it’s centered in the other." Read more

"There are no cultural barriers that render God accessible only to white middle aged men aged 18 to 55. Just a door that will be opened." Read more

"We can change this world through love. And that is the voice of God." Read more

"Where justice principles are applied, as in the case of a Jubilee, there remains the opportunity for human flourishing" Read more

"When we get who Jesus really is and what he really did and what that means for us to be together, then we can deal with the provovation. We can provoke each other. We can share honestly what's going on in our lives" Read more

"So perhaps the author of Proverbs is referring not to the path planning of spreasheets, agendas and 5 year plans, but perhaps of the authentic millennial who chooses values above paychecks, authenticity above ease" Read more

"It's difficult when a Victoria sponge becomes your weapon of hope, doesn't it really?" Read more

"We now live by the story of 'my right', 'my freedom to choose' - that's the most significant thing about my person - 'I choose therefore I am'" Read more

“The God who is interested only is supplying needs is a rather stingy God” Read more

“These and many, many more are our opportunities for glimpses and echoes, catching a sense of God” Read more

"These epiphanies don't happen in isolation, they happen in community with other people." Read more

"Does our belief in one God of all the earth rule out the possibility that others might know and worship the true God in ways that seem very alien, or even unacceptable, to us?" Read more

"We are invited to allow Mary to interpret the significance of her own child to us, rather than simply allowing the voices of men to overlay the miracle of the incarnation with speculation about the state of her virginity."  Simon Woodman, preaching on "Is a Virgin Birth Inconceivable?" at Bloomsbury, 23 December 2018 Read more

Two Bloomsbury sermons recently have reflected on the situation facing Palestinians in the occupied territory: Simon's sermon on the human sacrifice of Jephthah's Daughter, and Zoughbi's sermon on Naboth's Vineyard. Read more

"Matthew places God in his story in the person of the baby Jesus, a human at risk, on the run, helpless, innocent. This is deep theology, because it questions our whole notion of who God is. If God is an almighty God, all powerful, all knowing, omniscient and omnipresent, then God runs the risk of becoming a dictator God, or worse, a tyrant God." Simon Woodman, preaching on 'The Massacre of the Innocents' at Bloomsbury, 9 December 2018. Read more

Simon continued our Communion preaching series 'Why This Church?' looking at Independence and Interdependence between Baptists.  Read more

The #antilectionary continues with Luke's sermon on whether God cares about hairstyles... Read more

The Antilectionary series continued this week with Simon preaching on the distressing story of the Levite's Concubine. Read more

"We need to make the effort to read this horrific story from the point of view of the women, rather than the men. When we do this they move from being archetypical evil women who sexually abuse their own father, to become women who are themselves the victims of sexual violence and constraint, and whose actions are acts of great courage in the face of great threat." Read more

Sunday was Bloomsbury's Harvest Service. Listen to this podcast to hear an interview with Graham about the relationship between his faith, and his environmental concern, followed by the Bible reading, and Simon's (short) sermon. Read more

Bloomsbury Minister Simon Woodman takes a hard look at the 'strange' healing stories of Peter's shadow and Paul's handkerchiefs from the book of Acts. Read more

Luke preaching on Sodom and Gomorrah - and what it might (and might not) mean for those of us who read it today.  Read more

Dawn preaching on Christianity and Slavery. Read more

On Sunday, Simon challenged us to realise that Cain, the first murderer, is alive and well and living in our midst. Read more

"What would it look like if our gathering included discernment together on issues of politics, or immigration, or racism, or homophobia, or anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia? Not with a view to necessarily all agreeing at the end of it, but with an intent to hear from one another, and in doing so to hear from Christ himself." Read more

'I’d like us to keep at the forefront of our minds the question of how Spiritual Gifts can contribute to the common good? How they can be of the benefit of those beyond the community and individuals that receive and use them?' Read more

In the last of our series on the book of Hebrews, Simon asks what it means to speak of the return of Jesus. Read more

Our series of Communion Sermons on the theme of 'Why This Church?' continued on Sunday, as Dawn led us in an exploration of 'The Primacy of the Local Church'. Nyaueth and Andreea helped lead the prayers of intercession afterwards. Read more

In today's sermon from Bloomsbury, Luke Dowding invites us to see Jesus in lives lived at rest in God, rather than in the busy-ness of our own efforts. Read more

Bloomsbury was delighted to have our BMS World Mission link missionary Revd Dan Dupree preaching on Sunday. He spoke about Shalom, and how the good news of Jesus is affecting the impoverished communities of Tirana where he is based. Read more

On Sunday, Simon continued our series on the book of Hebrews. Read more

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"A Christian community such as a church is far more than a collection of individuals who have gathered together around a shared set of values, or some shared goals. We aren’t just brothers in arms in some fight against evil in the world. We are a family – sisters and brothers with Jesus, and children of God. We are partners with Christ in his mission to bring good news to all people, and we are the heirs of the promise that the dwelling place of God is with humans. Jesus dwells in our midst; he is our brother, and we are his family. And therefore who we are as the family of Christ matters, because it is through our familial relationships that Christ is made known. If we are dysfunctional, then we present a dysfunctional Christ. If we are anxious or destructive, then we present an anxious and destructive Christ." Read more

"Martyrdom in a Christian context never involves seeking death. But it does mean that we can be faithful unto death, and do with certainty that the Pastoral Jesus has already given us the gift of life that transcends the actual lived days and moment of our lives." Read more

“I often describe baptism as being a bit like a wedding, because both are places where people make promises in church. And the thing about a wedding is that you’re no more in love after you’ve said ‘I will’ than you were before; and in fact a wedding which is not built on a foundation of already existing love is probably deficient. But nonetheless something changes: the unmarried become married. And so with baptism. At one level nothing changes, faith is already present (and if it isn’t, then the good Baptist in me still wants to argue that something is deficient), and words of commitment spoken before God and a congregation don’t change that. And just as the exchange of rings doesn’t make a marriage, neither does the action of immersion into water make a Christian. But promises and action do still make a difference.” Read more

"The people of God are, as they have always been, those who hear, embrace and persevere in the word of God, regardless of their religious affiliation. And if this is true of Jews and Gentiles, I would want to suggest that it is also true of those who seek the truth of the word of God in other religious traditions. None of us have a monopoly on truth, whether Jew or Gentile, Christian or Muslim, Baptist or Roman Catholic, or whatever. What we have in common is that God reaches out to us in love to draw us to himself, and that none of us understands fully what this means. For those of us who search for God within the Christian tradition, however, what it means for us is an unswerving focus on the revelation of God in the person of Jesus." Read more

It can be hard sometimes, can’t it, to love one another? It can be hard to live together with the differences that we have. Differences of theology, belief, style, or preference. Some of us like noise in worship, some of us like silence. Some of us like the organ, some of us would prefer drums. Some of us like intellectual sermons, some of us struggle with them. And I could go on, and on… Read more

'The significance of Jesus being truly innocent is that when the collective guilt of society is placed on him, and when he is crucified for the sins of the world, it is a once-for-all sacrifice which is effective eternally, in all times and in all places. The insight here is that people can only be freed from their compulsion to scapegoat others when something decisively breaks that cycle, and that something, within the Christian tradition, is the cross of Jesus. The spiral of death is disrupted by the sacrificial death of Jesus, and those who encounter that disruption are given the capacity to enter into a new way of living where life, and not death, is dominant. Those who know that their sins have been forgiven by Jesus’ death, can discover that they no longer need to offload their guilt onto scapegoats, and so they can start to see new ways of dealing with human sin that take us in the direction of eternal life, rather than death. So the person who has embraced eternal life in Christ Jesus will see pathways to restoration and rehabilitation in others, where many will see just evil and danger. The person who has been born again from above, will see possibilities of forgiveness and new life where others see just punishment and death. The person who has been baptised into Christ’s body, and who shares in the spilled blood of the cross at communion, will know that they are a sinner saved by grace, and that they should not judge others, lest they too be judged. The person who believes that in Jesus, God became flesh, and died and was raised, will know that the potential for new life can emerge from even the darkest of lives,and so they will resist any attempt to write off anyone as beyond redemption.' Read more

'It is so easy for us to hate one another, just as it is so easy for us to hate ourselves. Of course, we don’t call it hatred. We are far too reserved for that kind of language. But we might admit, sometimes, to finding someone ‘a little bit difficult’. Which is, of course, code for something far worse. And we might subtly but effectively side-line those whom we struggle to love, quietly distancing ourselves from our sisters and brothers in Christ. And we might find ways of exhibiting our passive aggression towards others, all the while maintaining our own perspective of self-righteous restraint. 'But, but… if we can learn to love the children of God, if we can learn to obey the command of God spoken in Christ that we should love one another as he has loved us, then this is a victory of faith which can conquer the world.' Read more

"What Christ offers us is an opportunity to speak with boldness, to stand before God, to have the spirit in us, leading us. But this is a boldness that isn’t whispering behind doors, it is not speaking in arrogance without listening to others, it is one of freedom and humility that has an attitude and desire to reach unity together." Read more

"What we are, and will become, is not yet seen, not even by ourselves. We cannot yet see resurrection. We do not know what it will look like, or what shape it will have in our lives. All we know is that it is like Jesus." - Ruth Gouldbourne preaching at Bloomsbury, 15 April 2018. Read more

We pray for daily bread for the same reasons the Israelites gathered manna in the wilderness, to learn obedience to God who guides us into works of goodness, humility, and charity. The prayer for daily bread, you see, is not about me, or even about us, lest we think that God especially favours us by answering our cry for food. Rather, it’s a prayer that takes us into solidarity with those who lack, and which drives us into action to see the hungry fed, the poor raised up, and the impoverished released from the snares of debt. It is a prayer that takes us into good works of transformative charity. Read more

A sermon by Ruth Gouldbourne, preached at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church for the second Sunday in Lent, 25 Feb 2018. Read more

'I’ll say this as bluntly as I know how: I don’t think prayer changes God, or God’s mind, or God’s activity in the world. In fact, I’ll go further: I have a suspicion that to utter a prayer list according to some set incantation such as, ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen’, might actually be sorcery.I am deeply concerned when humans think they can control God by invoking prayer rituals or practices.' Read more

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The desire to protect the faith of the so-called-weak, can too easily become an excuse to perpetuate the abuse of those who are in fact far weaker, because they have no voice. The thing is, it is notoriously difficult for the powerful to judge who is weak, and who is strong. Any loss of power by the powerful runs the risk of becoming, in their mind, an experience of persecution; whereas in actual fact it might just be an equalising of power with those who until now have not had any. And so Christians sometimes fail to challenge injustice because of our deep-seated, internalised, and unacknowledged commitment to maintaining our powerful place in the status quo. And we then end up passing judgment on others who challenge the status quo, because we have become so entrenched in our position of strength, that we cannot see the alternative as anything other than an attack on our liberty. Putting it very bluntly: one person’s stumbling block is another person’s justice issue. Read more

"If our identity is first created and then sustained by shutting out the other, eventually the self we create will become so fragile, and so in need of constant defence, that all our energy and all our self will go into that protection. I suggest that when we see people who are so afraid of the other, so determined to shut out all voices but their own, well then we have become so concerned with sustaining our self-created identity that that very identity is eating us alive." Read more