Rishi Sunak’s proposal to grant more licenses for oil and gas development, in the light of all the debate about Global Warming and Fossil Fuels, was our first topic of discussion. The world demand for oil and gas is higher now than it was half a century ago- production was nearly 2.5 million tons in…
Author: The Meeting Place
First Thursday July 6th 2023
One of the Kirchentag Bible studies asked “When is the Kingdom of God coming?” (Luke 17:20). Does God work only through people, or in other ways? (At least we should perhaps be grateful it is not only through us as members of the Church!). In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says that the Kingdom is…
German Protestant Kirchentag, June 7th to 11th 2023, Nuremberg
These are the sessions we attended- a small selection of the many available in the Kirchentag (Church Congress). These Protestant meetings happen every two years, alternating with Catholic Congresses, with joint ecumenical meetings every few years. ACT OF REMEMBRANCE, Wednesday 14.00 to 15.00 at the Charterhouse Tower Ten murders were committed between September 2000 and April…
First Thursday May 4th summary
Artificial Intelligence (AI) had been in the news every morning before the First Thursday. Monday: AI scans were used at Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College- algorithms used to diagnose cancer had proved super-effective, more efficient than any current methods. Tuesday: Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI quits Google and warns of its danger-…
First Thursday April 6th 2023
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 the Wesley Church Centre in Chester has opened its doors on Saturday afternoons offering a place of welcome to some of the many Ukrainian refugees, mainly women and children, hosted by families in the area through the government supported schemes. Two Ukrainian women already resident in the…
First Thursday March 2nd 2023
Summary of the discussion The destructiveness and death toll of the recent Turkey/Syria earthquake contrasts with some other earthquakes, eg in Japan, where the severity was as high (or higher) but the building collapse and death toll were far less. The evidence appears to be that however good Turkish building regulations were, the monitoring and…
First Thursday January 5th 2023
Church attendances, as we know, have declined over the last half a century or more- in fact they had been failing to keep pace with population growth since soon after 1900. The temptation for the Church is either to try to be “up-to-date” (forgetting that “if you marry the Spirit of the Age you become…
First Thursday December 1st 2022
“What is Advent about?” asked John Bell in a radio broadcast sermon on Advent Sunday (November 27th). Is it a time for Christmas preparations (mainly in the shops), or a time for asking “What is God up to?” That might be a good question at a time when many young people are deciding not to…
Advent Sunday
These days, Advent Sunday is often seen simply as the beginning of the Christmas season, mixed up with all the television adverts, “Black Friday”, and the preparations for family feasts, present-giving, and all the rest. But in the Church’s Year it is the celebration of the “Coming of the Son of Man”- usually understood as…
First Thursday November 3rd 2022
We had seen a review of “Climate Restoration”, by Peter Fiekowski and Carole Douglis, published this year by Rivertowns Books, New York. This argues that even if the world achieves Carbon-Zero by 2050 so much damage will have been done that serious restoration will need to happen. Will that argument be used as an excuse…