I’d received a “Sorry we missed you” note yesterday from Royal Mail. I’d been sent a parcel by Recorded Delivery, but wasn’t in, so I had to go and collect it. At my previous address, I would have to pick up such parcels from the Brentford sorting office, but today was my first foray to the Slough sorting office. As I approached the sorting office, my heart sunk as I caught glimpse of a large queue coming out of the entrance. I parked up the car and joined the queue – at least it was a nice sunny day. I was quite surprised that within a few minutes I was signing for my parcel and walking out of the office with it! This would never have happened in Brentford, even with a tiny queue, you’d expect to spend ages waiting. Maybe Betjeman was wrong, maybe things aren’t so bad in Slough after all?

The afternoon was spent at the induction service of my friend Robin Asgher at Cranford Baptist Church. He’d been working there as a full-time evangelist. However the church didn’t have a pastor and so he was effectively doing the work of a pastor, so it was good to see him officially given the title of the pastor of the church. The Rev. Gary Brady delivered a well-focussed sermon on Acts 6:3,4

We will… give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.

The primary role of a pastor is to pray and to preach the word, and the pastor, the members and the community must always remember this. For without prayer and preaching, the pastor may as well give up.

After the service, I spent the time catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a long time – a good afternoon!

The day finished off at Ridley Hall evangelical church for a talk on Christianity and other religions. The speaker didn’t run through a comparison list of religions, but instead took us to the core of Christianity, with it unique message of God, in his grace, seeking man and reconciling himself with men, unlike all other religions which tell of man seeking God and trying to reconcile himself with God. For Christianity isn’t a religion of blind faith, but of a seeing, thinking faith, a religion which ties up with truth and fact. The more we understand the truth in the word of God, the more we live it and the more it speaks for itself.