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Welcome to St. Andrew's Church, Taunton, UK
We hope that
you will enjoy looking around our website, and will come back often, as
the site is updated every week. Our aim is to capture the spirit
of St. Andrew's Church online - our faith, our worship, our people, and
our community.
Our church is
first of all a spiritual centre, a place where people can find God, be
nourished in their spiritual journey, and grow in their life of faith.
If you could come along to one of our services your presence would be a
joy to us and to God.
If you have any
questions or suggestions please do contact us using the 'Get in Touch' button.
You will find all of our contact details there, including access to a
location map. We also love to know a little more about our web guests,
and would really appreciate it if you could take a moment to sign our
Visitors' Book.
Again,
welcome and thanks for visiting our site.
New on our website this
week:
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News from St. Andrew's
The Jailbreak Experience
by Alison Perry
of St. Andrew's Church |
Church News -
Bible Study +
Come along to our
Welcome Evening |
New! FWIW -
Weekly musings from a webmaster |
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Colour Supplement -
In praise of things
old and inconvenient
by Gordon Atkinson
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Colour Supplement -
Depression part 6 -
after 5 months of medication
by Gordon Atkinson |
Colour Supplement -
Eating out
by Nick Spencer
of LICC |
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Colour
Supplement -
Film review:
Soldiers on tape
by John Petrakis |
See previous weeks' editions of our
Colour Supplement |
See previous weeks'
editions of our
Homepage |
The Season of glad songs
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
The voice of
my beloved!
Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look, there he stands behind our wall,
gazing in at
the windows, looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past, the rain is over and
gone.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing
has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are
in blossom;
they give
forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
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New!
FWIW
Weekly musings of a
webmaster |
I first heard this reading
from the Song of Solomon at a wedding many years ago. The thought
of the bridegroom "leaping
upon the mountains, bounding over the hills" brought a smile to many
faces in the congregation. Those of us who knew him well had no
difficulty imagining him gazing hopefully in at the window - almost
certainly the kitchen window in search of a snack!
It's a wonderful piece of
poetry, and it gave me a good excuse to use a cute gazelle as our
homepage picture this week. My limited research on this book of
the Bible suggests that some Christians find the eroticism of the whole
thing a bit embarrassing. For me, it is full of joy, love and
spontaneity - something which we Christians could sometimes think about
emulating a bit more. In terms of the erotic, it seems to flow quite
nicely from the story of Ruth lying at the feet of Boaz (and what on
intriguing euphemism that is) which we heard in church a couple of weeks
ago. All this eroticism at 10 o'clock in the morning - whoever said that
going to church is boring?
So what is this new 'FWIW'
bit about? If you are a member of any on-line forums or chat groups you
will probably know that FWIW is an acronym: for what it's worth.
In the nine months that the site has been up and running I have tried
various content on the homepage, which is updated each week. Some
I have been pleased with, some I have been less than happy with. It
always takes me a long time to find the content, and I would really like
to have something home grown. So welcome to FWIW - an experiment in
producing something bespoke to St. Andrew's and our life together. The
title reflects the fact that I am unsure how this is going to turn out,
or how it will be received.
It's written by me, but it
is not intended to be about me - or only in as far as it is necessary to
put something in context. It is intended to be about the
experience of a Christian who struggles with the whole church and
faith thing, and if anyone finds that this rings bells for them then
I'll be very happy. The important thing is that I'm not holding
myself up to be anything other than a normal member of St. Andrew's.
In fact, I did think of calling it "A View from the Pew" - but it seemed
a bit corny and seemed to suggest it would be all about the church
rather than life as a Christian in the broader sense. If reading this
encourages someone else to have a go at writing a column for this site
they are more than welcome to do so.
I'm not trying to compete
with the eloquence and insight of Gordon Atkinson, the 'real live
preacher' whose essays I'm privileged to reproduce in our weekly Colour
Supplement, although he is certainly an inspiration for starting this
project. Thank you Gordon.
Nor do I place my writing
on a level with that of those bright young chaps at LICC who are so
switched on to current culture, and so thoughtful about what it has to
say to us Christians.
No, like all the best
harvest suppers, this will be home grown, home made, and probably half
baked (no offence intended to the St. Andrew's catering team!)
I've really no idea how
this will turn out, but something has made me start it, and if you would
care to join me in the experiment I would be delighted. You can
contact me with your feedback or thoughts using the link below.
Thanks for reading, and
have a good week.
Adrian
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