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Date:
29th Dec 2020
The 1960 song Stand By Me has been recorded by hundreds of artists, from the Beatles to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s also become a karaoke favourite and a popular choice for school choirs and orchestras. However, many people are surprised when they learn the song has its roots in a spiritual yearning expressed by slaves. Duncan Bartlett has been tracing the religious and psychological sources of Stand By Me. Read more
Date:
27th Dec 2020
Simon Woodman preaching on Christmas Day 2020 Read more
Date:
17th Dec 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church. Read more
Date:
11th Dec 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 13th December 2020 Read more
Date:
4th Dec 2020
Hope in the face of despair’ Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 6th December 2020 Joel 2.12-13, 21-22, 28-29 Read more
Date:
3rd Dec 2020
The slave-era spiritual “Hold On” has become a gospel classic, reinterpreted hundreds of times over the past two centuries. Noah, Jesus and the Virgin Mary all appear in the lyrics. Yet its message is a direct challenge to white Christians who attempt to justify racism. By Duncan Bartlett Read more
Date:
30th Nov 2020
A chance to re-watch the first of our 'Advent & Art' course, in which we bring the themes of Advent into dialogue with works of art. This course uses resources from The Visual Commentary on Scripture. Read more
Date:
27th Nov 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation - 29th November 2020 Advent 1 Read more
Date:
23rd Nov 2020
After a few pints, many sports fans burst into song. However few drinkers realise that some of the words they sing originate from the Bible, or that their favourite songs may have originated as the defiant cries of slaves. Read more
Date:
20th Nov 2020
A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, November 22nd 2020 Read more
Date:
20th Nov 2020
Advent and Art: an Advent Course for 2020, using the Visual Commentary on Scripture Read more
Date:
15th Nov 2020
A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, November 15th 2020 Read more
Date:
25th Oct 2020
‘God-in-the-box’ A sermon by Simon Woodman for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, October 25th 2020 Read more
Date:
18th Oct 2020
A sermon by Simon Woodman for Provoking Faith in a time of Isolatioon, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, October 18th 2020 Read more
Date:
11th Oct 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, October 11th 2020. Exodus 32.1-14 Read more
Date:
4th Oct 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, October 4th 2020 Exodus 12.1-13; 13.1-8 Read more
Date:
20th Sep 2020
Luke Dowding preaching at Provoking Faith in a time of isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church Read more
Date:
13th Sep 2020
Revd Sarah Parry preaching at Provoking Faith, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church Read more
Date:
23rd Aug 2020
Simon Woodman preaching 23rd August 2020 on Ecological Justice Read more
Date:
16th Aug 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 16th August 2020 Read more
Date:
9th Aug 2020
Simon Woodman, preaching at Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, The online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 9 August 2020 Read more
Date:
2nd Aug 2020
If we are ‘ambassadors of reconciliation’, how do we deal with those who have hurt us? How do we want to be dealt with by those we hurt? How do we stop hurting others? And how do we assist God in reconciling his world? Read more
Date:
26th Jul 2020
A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation The online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 26th July 2020 Read more
Date:
19th Jul 2020
Travis Adams preaching for the Church Anniversary of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 19 July 2020. Read more
Date:
9th Jul 2020
A sermon for Provoking Faith in a time of Isolation The online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 12th July 2020 Read more
Date:
5th Jul 2020
A sermon by Simon Woodman for Provoking Faith in a time of Isolation The online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 5th July 2020 Read more
Date:
28th Jun 2020
Simon Woodman preaching at Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 28th June 2020 Read more
Date:
21st Jun 2020
Luke Dowding preaching at 'Provoking Faith in a time of isolation', the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church. Read more
Date:
15th Jun 2020
Revd Dr Simon Woodman Preaching at 'Provoking Faith in a time of isolation', the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 14 June 2020 Job 3.1-10; 4.1-9; 7.11-21 Read more
Date:
8th Jun 2020
On Sunday 7th June, Bloomsbury held its first 'Communi-Tea Party', when the whole congregation had tea and caked together! Read more
Date:
7th Jun 2020
Simon Woodman preaching on reading Job in the light of Black Lives Matter and the killing of George Floyd, with prayers by Tommaso Milani. Read more
Date:
31st May 2020
Sunday Worship for Pentecost, from Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation Read more
Date:
31st May 2020
Bloomsbury's online gathering whilst Sunday worship is suspended due to the Coronavirus epidemic Read more
Date:
29th May 2020
Performed by members of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church Read more
Date:
24th May 2020
This world is not something to be endured, it is something to be redeemed. It is not somewhere to escape from, it is somewhere to live in. Read more
Date:
21st May 2020
We may thing we’re engaged in the mundane, ordinary responsibilities of our lives, but actually we’re participating in the glorious eternal purposes of God’s kingdom coming to the earth. It’s all a question of how you look at things. Read more
Date:
17th May 2020
"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
Date:
17th May 2020
A poem by Duncan Bartlett, with illustrations by Yuka Morita Read more
Date:
10th May 2020
A poem by Amy Deakin, inspired by 1 Corinthians 1.11, and read at Provoking Faith in a time of isolation, the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church. Read more
Date:
10th May 2020
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
Date:
3rd May 2020
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
Date:
26th Apr 2020
Those who follow Christ have the God-given capacity to see the pearl of great price inside each human soul, to discern the spark of the divine in every person. And our calling is not to charity, it is to transformation. Read more
Date:
19th Apr 2020
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
Date:
12th Apr 2020
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
Date:
10th Apr 2020
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
Date:
5th Apr 2020
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
Date:
29th Mar 2020
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
Date:
15th Mar 2020
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
Date:
8th Mar 2020
"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
Date:
23rd Feb 2020
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
Date:
21st Feb 2020
The website christianity.org.uk has been relaunched, and Bloomsbury Minister Simon Woodman is one of the Trustees. Read more
Date:
16th Feb 2020
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
Date:
15th Feb 2020
Ben and Sarah were married at Bloomsbury on Saturday 15th February. We wish them lots of love in their future together. Here is the link to the recording of the service. Read more
Date:
9th Feb 2020
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
Date:
2nd Feb 2020
'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
Date:
26th Jan 2020
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
Date:
24th Jan 2020
Papers from Theology Live! Held at Bloomsbury 23 January 2020. Read more
Date:
24th Jan 2020
The February issue of our in-house magazine, Bloomsbury News, is now available. Read more
Date:
19th Jan 2020
“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
Date:
10th Jan 2020
"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
Date:
9th Jan 2020
The starting point for a journey into greater inclusion isn’t a greater understanding of the marginalised and the oppressed, it is a greater understanding of ourselves and our own capacity for sinful idolatry. Read more
Date:
5th Jan 2020
"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
@BloomsburyCBCJul 26
'Sometimes the sole task of God's people is to continue to address God, even in the face of God’s unresponsive absence; not in any expectation that God will resolve our problems, but simply because injustice needs to be named.' @SimonPWoodman https://t.co/zoo5JH5kcu
