Minister’s Blog

Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate.          Margaret Cho Do you know when it is your head speaking and when it is your heart speaking when you say something?  Reacting to something that happens or responding to someone else’s comments, where do your words or actions come from? Joy Cowley [...]

Ruth 1:1-18 You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin–-to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours–-closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. J.R.R. [...]

Something got me thinking again about shame. There’s an important link between shame and mental health.  Also shame is experienced by a wide range of ordinary people. In some cultures shame is the reverse of honour.  In other cultures, in particular the main culture I’ve lived within, it is the reverse of success. […]

Did you see the article in Touchstone about the International Rural Churches Conference that Diane and I attended? Touchstone is handed out at church but anyone can pick up a copy at Cornerstone, or find it on-line . […]

It’s been more than a year now since the Kerikeri congregation experienced something unique in the life of a congregation.  Coming to church on Sunday morning meant coming to a place that was not only fresh and new and unlike any traditional building but fresh and new to everyone attending.  Those who had been part of the Sunday group as [...]

Aituā is a powerful Māori word that can’t really be matched in English.  H.W. Williams dictionary speaks of “misfortune, trouble, disaster, accident”, and next to it is aitu meaning “calamity”.  It’s when death comes trampling, death of a person or other sorts of death – of dreams, or a relationship, of health, of prospects, of the future we thought we [...]