Chads News - 5th Nov 2025

Dear Church Family,

Happy Bonfire Night!

I went to sleep last Saturday listening to the booming rumble of multiple firework displays all around us.  I imagine there will be more tonight and more this weekend.  As I lay listening to them under a warm duvet, not watching them in a cold wet muddy field I reflected on how we hadn’t arranged to take our boys to a bonfire party or fireworks display this year, but I was nostalgic for the times when we did. 

The first year here, when we thought it would be genius to get the big views across Manchester from the top of Werneth Low.  I had a church meeting, so Nells put our boys in pyjamas and dressing gowns with hot chocolate and marshmallows and bundled them into car seats (they were all v little) and drove up to the Low at about 6pm.  When I got home from my meeting after 9.30pm the house was empty.  The Low was gridlocked and they got home after 11pm!  It takes years to get to know an area.

As I thought about bonfire nights past, what I realised was that my most joyful memories were of bonfires not fireworks.  I love a good firework display, I love the colour, the noise, the Wow, the surprise, the drama of it all.  But I really, really love standing around a fire with friends and family, sipping a warm drink, chatting to or just being with those I love.  There’s something wonderfully deep and life giving about gazing at a fire as it burns away and something deeply wonderful about the colours and flickering of the flame.  The simple warmth, connection and quiet beauty of the fire lingers far longer in our heats than a burst of light in the sky.

We are consumers of entertainment, fed ever more exciting, Wow-factor drama.  We seek the new, the better, the faster, louder, more spectacular… and yet it does not satisfy our hearts.  Year on year, fireworks displays have got bigger, more amazing, longer and louder, the problem is with each one, we can long for an even better one next year.  There is a danger that we apply the same to our spiritual lives.  We want more dramatic experiences with God, more powerful worship songs, more jaw-dropping stories, more ‘better-ever’ events.  Those moments are gifts from God, and can shift us, but the real work is the fire of God’s love, burning consistently in our hearts.

I’ve been reading the book of Revelation this week.  It doesn’t have fireworks, but it does have ‘flashes of lightning, peals of thunder’.  It has fire and lampstands, and angels and trumpets and beasts, scrolls and horses.  There’s plenty of drama, lour moments, but all of this is just to get our attention to the real focus.  The Lamb upon the throne.  The multitude gather and bow down, before the one who is eternally there, the one who died so that we can be free.  The one who laid down his life for us.

God isn’t asking you to chase the latest spectacle, he isn’t calling you to be a brief firework, he is wanting to set a fire of love in your heart, which will burn for decades.  The fire is fuelled as we read his Word, spend time alone in prayer, focus on his glory in worship, and in deep honest friendships with others. 

Come Holy Spirit and burn in our hearts.

with love,

Richard

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