Deeper and wider

The phrase 'deeper and wider' - as I shared with this morning's congregation at St James - has been in my thoughts as I have been meditating on Ephesians 3.17-18 ( I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love, so that you, together with all God's people, may have the power to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ's love) and thinking about our coming year as two churches in Bermondsey.

Taking those two verses as a motto verse for the year I suggested to St James folk today (and will do the same at St Anne's at the end of the month) that we need, firstly, to deepen our roots and foundation in Christ's love as churches and then to seek to spread that love more widely in our parishes.

More about all that in due course, not least at our forthcoming joint PCCs awayday as we look to the future together.

Then this afternoon to Southwark Cathedral to see a new Bermondsey resident, Stephen Hance (left), formerly vicar of the thriving parish of the Ascension, Balham, installed as the Canon Missioner of the diocese.

His task? To encourage churches up and down the diocese in mission. A huge but crucial job. Pray for him.