Welcome to Swallownest Baptist Church! As I write this I wonder if I should be saying it or someone should be saying it to me? It is great to be with you all at long last and I can’t wait to get to know you all properly. If you are a visitor to the church that includes you as well.
My husband John and I, together with Buddy the cat, have been living in Nailsworth in Gloucestershire. I grew up in nearby Stroud which is also known as the Five Valleys. If you get valleys, you also get hills, to which there are lots. The Cotswolds is very pretty but it also has its own share of problems like anywhere else such as, homelessness, addiction, isolation, and loneliness.
John grew up in Bloxwich in Walsall, Birmingham and joined the Grenadier guards when he was 17. He’s seen a lot of the world and lived in many different places. I am sure we will be happy living here.
I am looking forward to finishing the painting and decorating and things on the house so we can go and explore the countryside here a bit more. You should know I’m a country lass at heart. Give me some fields to stomp around, and some birds to listen to, and I’m happy but as Paul Young sings, ‘Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home.’
Wherever we live, and wherever we are, God is with us. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8).
I am excited about what God has in store for us as a church family in the coming months and years ahead and I’m excited to be journeying with you all. Change is inevitable but if we stand still forever and don’t change then eventually the church would die and no one wants that, do they?
As I look up from my laptop, in my office, I see the word ‘love’ – it sits in the form of carved letters on my windowsill. One of my favourite verses in the Bible is that of 1 Corinthians 13:13 ‘And now three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’ We choose who we love and how we love. We choose whether we continue to go on loving when people are difficult, or we disagree with them. Sometimes love, and loving people can be difficult, but yet, we are called to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:39).
I pray that we may always remember to love each other, and to behave lovingly to each other and those we meet. May this be a church where God’s love is very apparent to all who enter it’s doors and beyond. May God’s presence be very real and may we be authentic to Him. May we carry God’s love and may it shine from us and into our community and beyond. If you don’t yet know Jesus and God’s love we pray that you may encounter him and His abundant love for you here at Swallownest Baptist Church.
Jo Regan is our Minister