Advent is traditionally the time over four Sundays leading up to Christmas Day – a period of expectant waiting, nowadays often with chocolate filled calendars. But what’s the point of waiting when we know the end of the story? In fact, waiting was a very, very, very big part of the whole story.

As Christians, how and when does Jesus expect me to speak up for him? Many of us feel too afraid; many of us want to do it better. This verse tells us that all of us can have the privilege of saying something to people about Jesus, that will help them

Sharing what we’ve found in Jesus with other people can feel like a scary thing to do, but what if this could be done in a really natural and normal way? John 1: 43-51 provides us with some inspiration towards gently helping people to see Jesus for themselves.

As followers of Jesus we can ‘shine and sow’ in many different ways. Discover in the story of The Lame Man from Acts chapter 3, an important principle about shining through choosing to freely give.

Many Christians know they should be telling others about Jesus, but feel inadequate to do so. They worry about what people will think or about getting it wrong, and often have mental list of all the times it ‘didn’t work.’ But what if we’ve missed the main point all along?

What we say matters, if we want to share the good news of Jesus with others; our life matters too.How can we live as Christians in such a way that it will have a positive impact on other people and draw them to Jesus?

One of Jesus’ final instructions to his followers was to go and make more followers. Most Christians know they are supposed to be doing this, but many find it hard to how exactly how to do it. Fortunately, Jesus also left two very helpful metaphors to encourage and equip us.

Jesus spoke about the cost of being one of his disciples and the suffering we need to know it will involve.

Was he trying to put people off? Why is it still worth following Jesus?

Luke looked at a story from the Old Testament where God's people took the presence of God for granted. He challenges us to think about the authenticity of our worship belonging to God and our expectations for God to be with us and for us being rooted in faith rather than assumption.

Today we were baptising some new Christians in our church, as a sign of how Jesus has changed their lives.

Why do we do this and what can we learn from the story of one of first baptisms recorded in Bible?