The mice who currently perform this task for us will be taking a well deserved break. Everything will be available once they return from their time by the sea.

If you are still seeing problems please leave a comment against this post letting us know what browser you are using and we’ll see what we can do to get your issues fixed.

As previously, the download was and is still working, as are downloads from iTunes and other podcasting clients.

It was a great weekend and the messages from this Sunday are definitely worth a listen if you weren’t there, and perhaps a second listen if you were.

If you click on “Download” then this is still working reliably and should result in you hearing the message you are wanting to listen to via the local media player on your device, whichever that it.

If you download your messages through iTunes or similar mechanism you are also unaffected.

Commenting is also unaffected and we’d love to hear more of your input and responses to the messages.

Again, apologies for this situation and we will get it fixed just as soon as we can.

Sometimes we go through seasons when the underlying theme for Sunday talks is planned, at others we leave it open to the Holy Spirit to move the people bringing the talk. This time it’s a bit of both. Ian Higginbotham has planned for a while to do a set of three talks on relationships: making, maintaining and ending. We’ve had two so far:

• Relationships (1) – Making: Ian Higginbotham
• Relationships (2) – Maintaining Healthy Relationships: Ian Higginbotham

These are both excellent practical talks about how we interact with people on a day-by-day basis. But beyond Ian’s planned talks we’ve also been asked to think again about our attitude towards relationships in the evening in messages from Mark Sleet and Paul Jackson:

• Luke 15 – The Parable of the Loving Father: Mark Sleet
• A better way to live…:Paul Jackson

Sometimes I, for one, can get wrapped up in the programme of things, the activity, the doing. These talks remind us of the things that are important to God, and God is a God of relationship.

God is love.

1 John 4:16

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Ephesians 2:4

In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:45

Working on the technical side of things means that I see all sorts of things when we meet on a Sunday morning – I notice problems, things that shouldn’t be the way they are, gremlins. If we were there for a performance this would be a problem, but we aren’t there for a performance we are there as a family to meet our father. I try to imagine our meeting a bit like an old time gathering around the fire, there’s no TV so everyone brings a song, or a poem, or a story. While the event is entertaining, it’s real purpose is to bind everyone together and cement everyone into the family. It’s about the relationships.

We should take note of the themes in the Bible that reoccur, and you can’t read far in the Bible without coming across a section on relationships – people to people, people to God, God to people.

When God repeats a theme to a body of people we should, likewise, sit up and listen.

What is God saying to you about the relationships that you keep?

• Are you a relationship builder?
• Are you a relationship bleeder?
• Are you a relationship maintainer?
• Are you a relationship destroyer?
• Are you enthusiastic in your relationships?
• Are you passive in your relationships?

Taking the challenge from Paul Jackson – what would it mean for you to lead a one-plus-one life?

When you see someone preparing a sermon you start to realise the amount of effort that they put into it. It’s not as simple as just chucking some words down and hoping that it’s what God wants you to say.

There are times at work when I could present for an hour without needing any preparation, I know my subject and I know what needs to be said in a given context. Preaching isn’t like that, preaching is about hearing something from God and bringing that.

Even when we are doing a series I know that the preachers are all trying to bring the thing that they believe God would want them to say.

There’s a challenge in this preparation to those of us who are going to sit and listen. If this person is going to say something that God wants to be said; is that the way in which we listen to it. I am sure that if I knew that God had sent a special envoy to say something specifically to me I would take full attention of what they have to say. Is that the way we treat the preachers?

Jonah was given a message to bring to Nineveh. He hated the people from Nineveh, and with good reason, they were awful. But God had a message for them and he wanted Jonah to deliver it.

Jonah ran away, but God had other plans and eventually Jonah was back in Nineveh.

From the accounts in the Bible it doesn’t sound like Jonah was a great orator, he wasn’t funny, he didn’t soften them up with a witty story, he just brought God’s message.

"Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."

Jonah 3:4

That’s apparently all he said, not that great a sermon really, but it was a message from God and the people heard it and changed.

If you are going to church tomorrow who are you expecting to hear from?

We’d had friends around for Sunday lunch and had spent all afternoon talking and enjoying the fine English spring weather. This meant that we hadn’t done the washing up, so that was my job while everyone else was out.

About half way through the washing up a started to wash one of the cooking dishes, but instead managed to break it, and in so doing put quite a nasty gash across my thumb.

While trying to stop it bleeding I wondered to myself whether I should just patch it up, or whether a trip to A&E was in order. Knowing that A&E gets busy on a Sunday evening later on I decided that I’d go early, rather than leave it and wait even longer. I’d managed to stop the bleeding enough to enable me to drive, so off I went.

Having checked in I sat in the reception waiting for my turn to see the triage nurse.

As I looked around I wondered about each of my fellow casualties story.

For some it was obvious what they had done, but how did they get that gash on their head.

For other’s it was obvious that alcohol had played a significant part in the story.

For the couple in the corner she’d clearly had something to do with his cut hand, and he wasn’t happy about it.

There was another couple and he was getting more and more frustrated with her lack of understanding of how Sudoku works.

There was the lady who was struggling with stomach pains for more than three days.

I whole mix of society.

There were those who you could tell were well paid and then there was the bearded man who looked like he was carrying all of his earthly belongings.

I couldn’t imagine any of them went to church, or that Jesus was even a consideration in their life – but I heard a sentence in my head over and over again:

“I love these people”

I had my thumb x-rayed and dressed and then drove home wondering…

The already archived podcasts will be coming back in phases, but this is a manual job so takes some time for each one. If there is a particular podcasts that you would like please contact us and we’ll make it a priority.

For those of you who like statistics we’ve had nearly 47,000 downloads of the Sunday Talks since we’ve been making them available. The downloads go around the world with visitors from over 90 countries.

It’s a privilege to know that we are helping people all over the globe.

This months Pastor’s Printout looks at:

• The grace of giving
• Are resources your ministry?
• A diamond in the rough
• Missions matters: Where did your money go?

I use a number of different bible study resources most days and here are a couple of them:

BibleGateway.com

Bible Gateway is the please I prefer to go to for Bible translations, but also for some of the reference material. I find the commentaries particularly useful. Once upon a time the number of versions of the Bible available online was quite limited – not any more. BibleGateway has 22 different English version and some of them are also available in audio format so you can sit back and listen.

They also have a mobile site for smaller screens, but I tend to use YouVersion for that.

YouVersion.com

YouVersion is another Bible site. The interface is a bit more modern that BibleGateway, they have 18 different English versions currently. There are some really nice tricks in the interface, I particularly like the ability to show two different texts, with two different versions side by side using the Parallel feature. They have audio versions too.

Their aim is to provide you with all of the facilities you need for Bible study with places to journal, the capability to make notes and provide contributions to a particular passage.

They’ve recently introduced a Reading Plan capability. I’m currently working through a reading plan for the Gospels and really enjoying it. The reading plans allow you to set the duration for your reading and to mark off each sections as you’ve completed it. While it shouldn’t be about marking-off parts of the Bible as read it’s great to be able to track your progress.

I’m a real fan of the mobile applications from YouVersion. My mobile device is a BlackBerry, but they also do an iPhone, Android, Java and plain browser version. Most of the features are available in the mobile version, the benefit is that you can take it with you.

The reading plans are synchronised between the online version and the mobile version which I make use of most days because I prefer to use my BlackBerry for my Bible reading.

What online tools do you find useful?