Samples and promotional materials

A sample copy of New Daylight

A sample copy of New Daylight Deluxe

A sample copy of Guidelines

Rooting Women's lives in the Bible - sample copy.

Four months of daily meditations which each include a Bible reading, reflection, prayer, thought for the day and prayer focus, as well as a weekly set of small group study questions.

The brf prayer and spirituality journal - a sample copy of Quiet Spaces.

Sample readings written by Wendy Bray on Rest.

Sample readings written by Lyndall Bywater on Money and the Kingdom of God

Sample readings written by Jean Watson on Questions Jesus Asked

Sample readings written by Sue Rinaldi on Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

Sample readings written by Barbara Mosse on Aidan, Cuthbert and Lindisfarne.

Sample readings written by Andrew Jones on Pilgrimage through Holy Week and Easter

In the next two weeks we are going to explore a biblical basis for valuing and caring for creation. In the first week we will consider the Old Testament; the second week will focus on the New Testament and our relationship with nature from a gospel perspective. Overall, we will see how the Bible provides a fresh approach to tackling a number of contemporary problems. We will also look at some practical issues in our own lives, and finally we shall explore the Christian message of hope. This is vital for us and also for many people in the wider community who have lost confidence in the future.

The book, as indicated by its name in the Christian Bible, contains many accounts of censuses, and lists (of offerings, sacrifices and so on); we shall dip into them to get the flavour. These censuses and lists were important to the book's compiler(s), so we should not miss them out all together but should consider why they were so important.

Over the coming week we shall be looking at 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon, three of the pastoral epistles of Paul. Each of these letters is addressed to a named person - two with pastoral responsibilities for churches (Timothy and Titus) and the third a Christian owner of slaves, Philemon, to whom Paul is sending back the runaway slave Onesimus, who has been radically converted after contact with Paul in gaol.

Economics is a social study with attitude. It claims to be science but cannot repeat its experiments, and its great perturbations rely on intangibles, what the great economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) called 'animal spirits'. The economy is a human construction, yet it dominates its originators like Frankenstein's monster. It is occasionally manageable but never mastered. It depends on the vote of every citizen of every country, a vote exercised by every economic act, and yet often even the mass of votes seems to make no difference. The economy is as simple as the most basic rural community engaging in barter can make it, and yet similar basic principles apply to the most complex industrial or post-industrial societies. It has moods and mathematics, trends and surprises, those who think they lead it and those whom it consumes (often the same people). We are all part of it and yet we observe it.

The Song of Songs is a truly fascinating, if neglected, biblical book. It stands on its own, for it makes no connections to the history and religion of Israel (except for the 'Solomon' references). It does not mention God, the covenant or even Israel. It is love poetry. So why is it in the Bible?

Both Old and New Testaments were born out of a multi-faith world. They are the record of a range of writers who interacted with the context of their time, and that context was multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-faith. How were the Jewish people, who believed they had been chosen by the One God, to relate to those who had no such monotheistic faith? How were they to preserve the integrity of that faith as a minority community battling continuously for their survival, and to maintain the purity of their worship? How were they to affirm the ethic which was a consequence of their calling - to care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan and the poor - against the pressures of power and the pressures of survival? And what of the world before they became conscious of themselves as a chosen people? What of the creation of the world, the early history of humankind and the origin of evil - how were they to think of these questions in a world of diverse faiths, histories and philosophies?

The area of love, sex and relationships is one that the church has not always handled terribly well. People outside the church often have all sorts of misunderstandings about what the teaching of the church really is, and some of the controversies of recent years have made it appear as though the church is obsessed with sexual sin. To hold to the traditional teaching of the church in matters relating to sexual ethics is to live in a radically countercultural way in today's society.

Sample readings written by Lyndall Bywater on The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Sample readings from Guidelines - Justin Welby on Coping with Danger.

Sample readings written by Fiona Barnard on The Bible as literature

Sample readings written by Lyndall Bywater on Praise and Thanksgiving.

Sample readings written by Andrew Goddard on The Bible and Politics.

Sample readings written by Stephen Cottrell on Christmas: restoring the wonder from New Daylight.

Sample readings written by Isobel Peaty on Justice from New Daylight.

Sample readings written by Maggi Dawn on Romans 8 from New Daylight.