The Hearth of Mopsus

Over the months since it came out, I was the very least important person pouring scepticism on last year's Bible Society report 'The...

... it would be easier to say, was the same as nearly every year, except there are always variations on a theme. Every event was better atte...

Holy Week at Swanvale Halt was bookended by syncope. Lillian, our former Lay Reader, keeled over during the Palm Sunday mass, and at 8am on ...

It was pretty similar to last year in terms of numbers, the Cribbage and Midnight very much the same, 8am a bit down, and 10am a bit up. The...

Just a very quick update this evening. Our last Messy Church in September had the lowest uptake since we started the event some time before ...

... was how I greeted the two Catrinas I shared the train with as we disembarked at Waterloo on Saturday and got a big skeletal grin in repl...

This morning I had the rare experience of getting ready for the 10.30am midweek service and having no congregation. I followed the standard ...

Never was anything so rightly characterised as a mixture of triumph and disaster as Christmas 2022 at Swanvale Halt. The chief instance of t...

Messy Church at Swanvale Halt has been severely impacted by the pandemic, though we aren't entirely sure why this should be. Our numbers...

Dr Abacus would, I’m sure, warn all of us that we should pay attention to facts and figures and not our own vague impressions of things. Our...

For a couple of weeks our gates have been a bit low on Sunday mornings. I went through the list of the congregation and discovered that I kn...

It felt strange at 7am yesterday morning to go down the hill to the post box and then past it  for the first time in twelve days. Even in th...

I had the sequence of the changes we'd made to our children's ministry at Swanvale Halt in my mind, but, when I looked back in prepa...

As usual, the carol service at Smallham (altar pictured left) concludes my Christmas duties. The little chapel was packed again this year....

Barely any families ever come now to our Family Service, the non-eucharistic and slightly less formal service we hold on the first Sunday in...

There were two new bits of kit to welcome into Swanvale Halt church this Christmastide. The first was the new votive light holder installed ...

Our Archdeacon is still quite fresh in the job. I went to his house a couple of days ago to have a conversation about how things were going ...

Couples have to be determined to get married at Swanvale Halt church. This is not because we have a parish policy of making them somersaul...

This closeup picture of the Maundy Thursday Altar of Repose makes the candles look crazier than in fact they were. The flowers, as usual r...

Last year our Ash Wednesday observances were exceptionally well attended: I wasn't anticipating a repeat performance this, given the w...