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Ramble for Townsville Central City Mission Connections Newsletter 12 October 2025

Clocks went forward in southern states last weekend. “Spring forward, Fall back” in case, like me, you get confused. When we lived in Brisbane, Telstra would regularly change our mobile phone time to NSW although Queensland doesn’t observe summer time. Twice a year, I was going to say regular as clockwork, but clockwork clocks weren’t affected. Telstra’s explanation each half-year was that Brisbane was near the border between Queensland and NSW, and some phone signals came from NSW masts. Whatever, I got used to folk (and me) being early or late for church. This Sunday’s gospel (Luke 17) has Jesus travelling along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As ever, metaphorically or geographically, he’s to be found in the margins. In those margins is where needy people are who don’t fit anywhere else. Like a Samaritan leper who couldn’t present himself to a Temple priest because he wasn’t allowed in the Temple. So he comes back to where he is accepted and welcomed, to Jesus who declares ...
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Ramble for Townsville Central City Mission Connections newsletter 5 October 2025

  The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5) The trouble with writing for Connections (or Kirwan Uniting’s Keeping in Touch, this is a syndicated article this week 😊 ) on the topic on which I’ll be preaching, is that it sort of gives the game away, so you can go to sleep during the sermon on Sunday. If you do, you’ll miss the introductory jokes. When I were a lad, much harm was done to folk going through trials, perhaps a worrying medical diagnosis, or a financial or relationship crisis, by other Christians telling them that they didn’t have enough faith in God for God to be able to work a miracle. Doesn’t say much for God. Many people, me included, still fret that we don’t have enough faith. But we’re missing the point. The faith is God’s in us, not ours in God. St Paul hits the nail on the head in his epistle which accompanies Sunday’s lectionary Gospel, 2 Timothy 1. “ … I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have e...
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Sermon preached at Kirwan Uniting Church 7 September 2025

I had the privilege of baptising a young baby this morning. It never becomes routine. Whatever the promises which parents and godparents make, however we might privately make unsupported, subjective, judgments about those, and we shouldn't, the real promise is from God's word to the child: Luke 18: ' People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to bless them and pray for them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “ Let the little children come to me, and don’t hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."' This from a promise-keeping God described  in Deuteronomy 7: ' Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations.' Baptism is the most generationally witnessing of the church's  sacraments. Sometimes the lectionary readings of the day are as inappropriate as you could possibly imagine, not just for a baptism, b...
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Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet 7 September 2025.

A very dear friend is driving “The Lap” around Australia as a rite of retirement passage. In the will of the Lord, and if the creek don’t rise, he’ll be at church with us on Sunday. I don’t know what he uses for satnav, whether a dedicated device or his mobile phone, or even if he uses a satnav at all, and relies on paper maps. Wouldn’t surprise me, he’s a bit of a Luddite 😊 The trouble with satnavs is that you have to know a starting point and then a destination. OK, the start point is easy, it’s where we are. “You are here” as QPWS guides helpfully tell us. But where are we going? The Uniting Church Basis of Union, a most wonderful document, I’ll give a link at the end, puts it in an undefined location but offers a route. Here is what it proclaims: “The Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come. On the way Christ feeds the Church with Word and Sacraments, and it has the gift of the Sp...
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Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet 24 August 2025.

Don’t laugh, I’m mentoring disadvantaged young drivers to get their 100 hours driving experience before they can apply for a test. So-called “friends” ask, “are you teaching them the proper way of winding down their window and shouting imprecations at other road users?” Cynics. Although that will be important after they’ve passed their test 😉 No, what I offer is encouragement. After an hour of reverse parking, reversing in a straight line, hill starts, they need to hear “Hey, you’re doing really well, I think you’ve cracked it, you should be proud of yourself”. If you knew the background of some of these kids, encouragement is a rare commodity. A late acquaintance of mine exercised what he called a “Barnabas ministry”. Barnabas features in Acts 4, not taking as prominent a rôle as the better known apostles, but supporting them in encouragement and prayer and in practical giving. His name means, Son of Encouragement. I have a very simple test when I plan and look back on church ser...
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Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church's Keeping in Touch pew sheet 3 August 2025

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The Rambler Returns Since I last graced the pages of this august publication, a few things have got worse. With my physiology, I mean. I’m deafer, my balance is even more, er, unbalanced, the doc says my blood sugar  takes me into diabetes land, and my memory is not as an elephant’s. But on this latter point, I have a couple of things in common with John Newton. With Rambling Love Richard (who has just noticed that he held his first service at KUC seven years ago next Tuesday.)
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Let me in! Or Come on out? A reflection on a reflection, 27 April 2025

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You don’t know John Mercer or Robert Detheridge or Barry Cooper. Not the particular people of that name who feature in this ramble, anyway. They were among my playmates of almost 70 years ago. Why do they come to mind now? Well, a more recent and cyber playmate, Bob Chapman, a mate in the playgrounds of Facebook and Ship of Fools, in Real Life(™) far away in Washington State, USA, has posted about a reflection which then Archbishop Bergoglio offered at the last Papal Election Conclave, on Revelation 3:30, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.” We’re familiar with Holman Hunt’s representation of that scene. Some of us are familiar with a jokey caption accompanying it: Jesus: Let me in! Householder: Why? Jesus: I want to save you! Householder: What from? Jesus: From what I’ll do to you if you don’t let me in. A theology (if you can call it that) of soteriology to which I don’t subscribe, btw. In Revelation 3, St John has Jesus saying that he wants the door to open so th...
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