Simon Benham’s Blog
Hello, and thanks for making it to my blog. My name is Simon and I am the Senior Pastor here at Kerith Community Church.
This blog is a place for me to share thoughts on pretty much anything which takes my interest. This will often be related to things happening in our church community or life lessons I am in the process of learning. It could also be reflections on current world events, reviews of books I am reading or commentary on how well Newcastle United are doing in the league! You just never know what you're going to get...
I hope you find this blog interesting and insightful. If you have any ideas on topics you'd like me to write about, then please email me and I’ll see what I can do. Also, if you’d like to get these blogs sent straight to your email inbox, you can subscribe using the button below.
Happy reading,
Simon
Pilgrimage
I’m planning on doing a pilgrimage at the end of May. Why would I do that and what relevance could it have for you?
Proposed new elders – an exciting day for Kerith
Whenever God wants to create life, he first creates a structure which will provide an environment for that life to flourish. Said another way; God never sows life into nothingness or chaos. A key part of our structures at Kerith are our elders are entrusted with the oversight of the church in terms of spiritual direction, pastoral care, theology, protection of the church and more.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast!
When I first took over as senior pastor of Kerith Community Church, one of the things I felt God say to me was to not worry about having an amazing strategic plan, or casting an audacious vision for what we were going to achieve in the next five or ten years as a church.
The ‘fudge’, the football and women elders
Over the last 20 years, Kerith has been on a big journey regarding the role women play as leaders in the life of our church. My observation is that most churches we relate to have been on the same journey as us, but not many have yet taken that final step of affirming women elders. So I thought I’d write a bit on why I think that is, and why I think it’s important we made the decision we did to take that final step of affirming women as elders.
Understanding the times and knowing what to do
We live in bewildering times. Two years of a global pandemic, talk of war in Ukraine, a growing awareness of the climate emergency, rising fuel prices and a crisis of confidence in our elected officials are just some of the issues filling the news cycle on a daily basis.