Showing everything tagged as Revd Dr Sam Wells

A few years ago I was asked to take the funeral of a woman whom I hadn’t known but who’d lived in the parish where I was vicar at the time.

I want to tell a story about money and church. It’s a story that I believe makes sense of what it means for a church like St Martin’s to ask the members of its congregation to reflect on whether they might be able to consider giving a little more of their own money to enriching the quality and breadth of our common life.

To be street homeless – to be a person who sleeps outside – is to face many challenges every day. The day probably begins early: the patch on which you’re sleeping is likely to be needed as an access door, or your presence is challenged by a park attendant or security guard.

January 18-25 marks the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The week began in 1908 among an Anglo-Catholic strand of the Episcopal Church in New York State. The founders wanted to extend the notion of atonement from reconciliation with God to reconciliation of the churches.

The Grenfell Tower disaster clustered together what’s terrifyingly and horrifyingly amiss about our society and showed us so many kinds of wrong. But it also showed us the meaning of Christmas.

There are two kinds of things: those that abide forever; and those that last for a limited period. The things that abide forever we call essence; the things that last for a limited period we call existence.