50th Anniversary Service of Thanksgiving and Celebration

The United Reformed Church (URC) is delighted to announce a new date for its 50th Anniversary Service of Thanksgiving and Celebration. The new date is Saturday 15 April 2023 and the Open Church House event at 86 Tavistock Place, WC1H 9RT, will also take place on the same date from 10am-12pm. A few things to note: Tickets […]

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Christmas – Dear Friends

Dear Friends, What’s the first sign that Christmas is really on its way? Not the cards and gift-wrap, which have been on sale since August. Not the weather which, as I write, is still unseasonably mild. No; one of the sure signs has to be the launching of the big stores’ Christmas Adverts. These lavish […]

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Autumn – Dear Friends

Dear Friends, Less than a month ago, as I’m writing, we marked the funeral of our late Queen Elizabeth II. Whatever your views on the monarchy, it was an impressive occasion: ten days of pomp and pageantry, liturgy and logistics, all meticulously planned and impeccably executed. Alongside all the formal proceedings, and equally impressive, was […]

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Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the URC

So here we are, the United Reformed Church! Only we were never meant to reach this milestone. The great hope in creating the URC was that churches would learn how to do the process, how to have the conversations, so the other churches could join in in a great snowball effect. What we actually learnt […]

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Oberammergau Passion Play

In May, Jamie and I joined a party of URC people, led by Michael Hopkins, to see the Oberammergau Passion Play. The play was devised as an act of thanksgiving by the village of Oberammergau after they were spared from the Plague in 1633, and has been performed every 10 years since 1680. It was […]

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A Prayer for Hebron

In April, Revd Maggie Hindley spent a month with CPT in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. Maggie’s reports on their work, witnessing to the daily deprivations of the Palestinian people, were circulated by email and on the church notice boards. Maggie also sent us this prayer for Hebron, written by the first foreigner to […]

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Easter greetings from the Minister

Dear Friends, Last week, writing for the Ealing magazine, I commented on the warm Spring weather. Today it’s snowing! But we are past the equinox, the clocks have changed, and the evenings are longer and lighter. We have forsythia in the garden, and neighbourhood trees are thick with blossom. When there is so much trouble […]

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Advent message from Moderator

Dear friends, At the start of 2021 we were filled with hope. Nothing could be as challenging as the previous year…. could it? The miracle of the vaccination programme was beginning to be rolled out. Life would return to normal before too long. But, of course, it wasn’t until Easter that some churches re-opened and […]

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General Assembly 2021 

In July this year, I was privileged to be one of the Thames North Synod reps at General Assembly.  I found it impressive. Last year, faced with Covid, GA was simply cancelled. A year on, the URC has embraced technology and, with the considerable help of the tech wizards in URC Youth, moved the whole […]

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