Welcome to our service today. It’s great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee. If this is your first time at BBC we especially welcome you.As we approach Easter in a week or so I am reminded of what God gave up for us when His Son Jesus died on the cross to take our sin and our shame, our guilt and our burdens. He gave everything. And Jesus, knowing this was the will of His Father, surrendered.As Christians we are called to 'deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him' (Luke 9:23) That's a pretty big statement! Yet that is what Jesus has told us to do if we truly want to be His disciples. So that got me thinking - what do I need to surrender? What do I need to give to Him and not carry/plan/control myself? Well I guess the answer is 'everything'! I'm not there yet - like a lot of the Christian walk it's a process - learning and discerning as we go. So I leave you with the song resonating in my head - All to Jesus, I surrender, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.With love & blessings, Sandra

Welcome to our service today. It’s great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee. If this is your first time at BBC we especially welcome you.Last Sunday after the service someone reminded me of a word that Suzanne Pillans gave us as a church early on in our ministry here at BBC. In summary it was that God was going to bring in the broken, the lost and the hurting because He knew He could trust us with them and they would find healing, hope and wholeness and a church family that loved them. I believe we are and have been for some time now seeing the outworking of this word. I was also reminded of how much of a privilege it is to be a part of that and I couldn’t agree more!What I also consider a huge privilege is walking this journey with you all. Every week I see many acts of kindness, generosity, the outpouring of love, wisdom and the readiness to get involved with one another, the wider church and the community. So today I want to honour you for that. You are an amazing church family and there’s no place I’d rather be. Thank you for that privilege.With love & blessings, Sandra

Welcome to our service today. It’s great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee. If this is your first time at BBC we especially welcome you.As I drove down the hill today I looked out over the Canterbury plains and the sun was shining over them. The words that came to mind were ‘The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning, it’s time to sing Your song again, whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes’. So bless the Lord I did! Not long after that I was thinking about everything that needed doing in the time I had before me and I felt the stress levels rising - how fleeting were my blessings! Then without even asking the Lord I felt the tangible presence of His love and peace surround me as I drove the rest of the way to church. It was the ‘peace that passes all understanding’. I hadn’t even asked for it! Did I deserve it? - no! But our God doesn’t work like that. In His grace He poured out His peace upon me— in His grace He pours it out on you too, and His love, and His mercy, and His blessings and so much more. How awesome is our God!With love & blessings, Sandra

Welcome to our service today. It’s great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee. If this is your first time at BBC we especially welcome you.I’m sure most of you will have heard that the great evangelist and teacher Billy Graham passed away last week aged 99. Many thousands of people around the world made a decision to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour at one of his many crusades.Since his passing into glory I have read many of his quotes. For me the one that resounds most in my mind is when he said “My home is in Heaven. I’m just travelling through this world”. I love his perspective! Our time on earth is but a drop in the ocean in the light of eternity. Yet we can be inclined to live it clothed in worry, stress, anxiety, fear, jealousy…. and in so many other ways, all the while missing out on the glorious plan that God has promised and set before us. I don’t mean to belittle anyone that suffers from the above – I can relate to some of those myself. But instead of being weighed down by them in this short time that we have in this world let us set our eyes on Jesus and make the most of the time we have left before we too pass onto glory where our eternal home is waiting for us. What a glorious day!With love & blessings, Sandra