Welcome to Weobley & Staunton Joint Benefice

On the way back from Australia, we stopped for 3 nights in Kuala Lumpur (our first time in Malaysia). We booked a tour with a guide to see local sites. Our guide was an Indian Malay man named Raji. He spoke non-stop for much of the day about his life, Malaysian politics and Hindu faith. Included in our tour was Batu Temple Cave, a local Hindu shrine. Before we ascended the 272 steps to the top, he assured us that our families would be blessed by the god Murugan whose statue is within the cave. We ascended in 31-degree heat, pestered by hungry monkeys and dodging descending tourists. I was dizzied by the heat and the bizarre panoply of gods in combined animal and human form. Raji assured me that there are 60 million gods in the religion, but nobody really knows the exact number. Wikipedia advises me that Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, even agnostic, humanist or atheistic. All terribly confusing really.

By way of contrast there is an agreed belief amongst Christians that there is just one God, even if we speak of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we meet each Sunday we recite the Nicene Creed, which provides a concise expression of the God who has created the universe, was made flesh in Jesus Christ, died for our sins and rose again so that we might  experience the fullness of life in His presence now and beyond the grave. The creed also provides a clear rationale for why we continue to meet in church, supporting each other in Christian witness.

This year is the 1700th anniversary of the writing of the Creed by the council of Nicaea. If you would like to understand the Creed in more depth, I am running an Advent            discussion group entitled ‘We Believe’ which explores the Creed and its implications for our shared faith and witness. This will happen on four consecutive Mondays, 2.30pm- 4.00, starting 17th November and ending 8th December, at  St Thomas Parish Room, Kington Road, Weobley.

All are welcome!

Rev’d Philip

I confess to being fairly baffled by incoherent and bonkers ideas spouting from politicians of all stripes over these last few days of Party Conferences and political posturing. Very often, newly thought-up policies seem to be based on misunderstanding, or else on current myths in order to please "core voters," or just to tap into the perceived public mood of the moment.

The sadness is that many of the ideas and opinions expressed are not based on what is     actually true, relevant and reasonable, let alone any understanding of what is just and good. 

As Christians, we are called to stand for what is just, good, true and above all else,                  compassionate. When asked how we are to live our lives under God, Jesus' said we are to love God with all our heart, mind and strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves.  In the gospels, especially John's Gospel, we see God is concerned with truth – what is actually the case as opposed to mere opinion or prejudice. If we are to take our calling seriously, we need to cut through the chaos of bonkers ideas and lies. We need to arm ourselves with  information that is actually true. Perhaps we can be brave enough to speak up when destructive ideas based on lies or misunderstanding are being spread?

How will we do this? Many folk I talk to have lost faith in ALL news media – especially ones that challenge some of their own opinions.  I suggest that we all need to listen to a variety of "voices" – to include our own friends, neighbours, and maybe several different news        media.   Does what we read in the Daily Whatever accord with our own experience of what is happening round and about us? Can we learn to spot the difference, between a headline that is fairly clearly just "click-bait" and one that is leading on to a serious story?

Discuss this with your friends and family: it's a vital area to think about before we're all sucked into a whirlpool of lies and misinformation that, as Christian people, it is our job to resist!

The Revd Prebendary Mike Kneen