Kirby Muxloe Free Church

Folks – I’ve just added the third study to the Small Group Studies on the ‘Five Core Values.’ Right-click on the link below, and choose to ‘Save target as…’ to save it to your computer. The next few sessions will follow as soon as I can find a moment!

27th-31st July, KMFC

Booking forms have gone out today into local schools for this year’s Holiday Club. If you haven’t received a copy, perhaps because you go to a different school or maybe it just fell out of your bag, then you can download a copy here.

If you are a bit too old for Showstoppers, but have come to Holiday Club in previous years and would like to be involved, then you may be able to come as a helper – email me for more details.

Don’t leave it too late; last year we were full to capacity.

I’ve just completed the second set of study notes to accompany our look at the BU ‘Five Core Values’ booklet. I’ll add to this document week by week as we work through it, and I’ll be preaching on the topics on Sundays as well. Please do download these notes if your group would like to use them; group leaders already have the BU ‘Study Pack’ if you would like to have a go at a more ‘experimental’ approach to the study!

Title: Cluster Breakfast
Location: Hall / Church
Description: Churches from the West Leicester Baptist Cluster meeting together
Start Time: 8:45
Date: 2009-05-16

Everyone is welcome - we’ll spend some time talking about Safeguarding issues, and time sharing and praying together.

Lots of new sermon material on the ‘Sermons’ page – and I’m trying to post both audio and the sermon notes there, so please do take the time to look.

For obvious reasons we’re not posting the audio from Sundays when we have a visiting preacher who is considering the Associate Minister position. It would be nice to let people hear those messages, but we need to be careful – some folk may not have reached the position where they have felt it right to inform their current church that they might be moving. You can always borrow the service on CD – that way you can also hear the rest of the service as well as the sermon.

Please do take a moment to explore the new sermon player we’ve added to the site. Go to the ‘sermons’ page – link on the left – and choose a sermon to listen to. Some of the sermons also have my notes included. We’ve included John Weaver’s address from the East Midlands Baptist Association Day last Saturday, and other sermons will be added as quickly as we can manage.

So if you miss a week, you can always catch up. As well as listening using the player on our site, you can also subscribe to the sermons as a podcast and catch up when you are out and about.

If you fancy listening to some other sermons, then our library is being hosted by the good people at Sermon.net and there’s a huge library of other preachers to investigate.

I’ve been preparing for a sermon on the Transfiguration. And a phrase relating to Philip Pullman’s ‘Dark Materials’ has stuck with me. ‘We must build heaven here on earth; there is no other place’

Well, to all intents and purposes that has been what successive generations have sought to do in this country since the early ‘60s. Our nation has been effectively secular as far as government and business are concerned.

And while it is much easier to criticise than it is to create, I’m tempted to say ‘with 50 years in which to work, is this the best you can do?’ Is this it?

There are some really good things in our society. Good healthcare, for the most part. Freedom to express opinions. A high standard of living. Low infant mortality. A moderately tolerant populace, and a largely benign government. But many of the things we might call ‘good’ have been declining lately (credit crunch; civil liberties; tolerance?) and there are many who do not share the benefits of such an enlightened society.

It does sometimes seem to me that modern secularism is happy to point the finger, but less prepared to shoulder responsibility. Religion is to blame for all the world’s ills; but secularism isn’t to blame for Mao, for Stalin, for Kim Jong-Il or for Pol Pot. Religion has oppressed; secularism can bring freedom, but don’t come running to me if you don’t like what freedom looks like.

‘Building heaven on earth’ – how’s that going for you, then?

KMFC makes details available of our services and other useful information on ‘Find a church’ – click on the logo to access their facilities if you are going on holiday and want to worship while you are away, or are looking for a church near you.

We also make use of the excellent ‘Leicestershire Villages’ site to publicise forthcoming events. Check them out if you would like to know what’s happening.

Found this really interesting interview – thought I’d mention it here. It’s posted on the Musicademy website, and it’s an interview with David Murrow, who wrote the book ‘Why men hate going to church.’ The article is here – take a read. I think David is right in most respects.

David has a website to go with the book – Church for Men. Well worth a visit. And if you would like to find the book, the picture links to Amazon - £6.60 + p&p

There’s some valuable food for thought there. I’d encourage you to take a moment to check out the reviews – they’re not all positive! One reader called it ‘an awful book’: ‘I think this is a dreadful book pandering to, and endorsing, a concept of `masculinity’ that is as dated and irrelevant as using leeches to cure cancer.’ But others really liked it. Why don’t you have a read and tell me what you think?