The United Reformed Church

Share this article

Latest News

Love the stranger as yourself

Fleur 2 The UN described the plight of Rohingya people as the world's fastest growing refugee crisis. More than half a million people have risked death to flee persecution in Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017.

Since 2015, more than one million migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Iraq have crossed into Europe, creating division over how best to deal with resettlement. The excess of headlines about refugees can cause people to become desensitized to the plight of those in desperate need. Indeed, it’s easy to lose sight that Jesus and his family were, at one point, refugees and given refuge.

The Revd Fleur Houston, author of You Shall Love the Stranger as Yourself: The Bible, refugees and asylum (biblical challenges in the contemporary world), a retired minister of the United Reformed Church and member of Macclesfield and Bollington URC, highlights biblical perspectives on the refugee crisis, encouraging people to give to those in need.

Walk the way paved with faith in the New Year

fireworks credit unsplash Nicolas Tissot As we enter 2018, Moderator-elect of General Assembly, the Revd Nigel Uden encourages people to walk the counter-cultural way of Jesus Christ.

Throughout 2018 we will mark the end of the First World War with thanksgiving that it ended, the commemoration of the ‘lost generation’, and reflect on what its lessons were.

A century on, many ponder the mysteries of a prosperous continent choosing to risk everything, and of soldiers fighting on, yet piercing the war’s impenetrable shadows with the light of their comradeship, dependability and self-sacrifice.

From the past, the present for the future

Boy under tree credit Unsplash Andrew Neel The Revd Kevin Watson, Moderator of the URC’s General Assembly, shares a story about the greatest Christmas gift of all time.

Imagine the scene one Christmas morning a few years ago in a materially rich house, but emotionally poor home.

Down the stairs, a child runs excitedly and expectantly along the hallway passing room after room, and into a huge reception room. There in the corner stood a huge artificial tree resplendently adorned with every kind of ornament – except with anything Christian that could be deemed offensive – that was admired by all the business guests at the party the night before.

Don't lose sight of Christmas' importance

Baby Jesus credit unsplash credit walter chavez Derek Estill, Moderator-elect of General Assembly, reflects on the importance of Jesus’ birth.

In amongst the excitement and final preparations for Christmas Day we often lose sight of what that first Christmas Eve would have been like.

No tinsel or lights for Mary and Joseph, who were urgently and anxiously trying to find somewhere to stay. Mary was about to give birth and Joseph worried about her and how things were going to work out.