Fitzroy Presbyterian Church - The Sunday Download

2019 12 08 am: Only this baby can be deep and wide.mp3

Steve steals a phrase from a friend who in his artist entrepreneurism always advises that only Jesus can be deep and wide, as the old children's chorus taught. He helped us look at those who spoke about who this baby was going to be before he was born and in the birth narratives to discover the apocalyptic reach of this baby in the straw. Perhaps wider than deeper...

2019 12 01 am: Christmas is not just for children.mp3

In our first Advent service of 2019 Steve makes clear that whatever Steve Turner said in a poem about Christmas being for the children it most certainly isn't. In our Matthew reading, a baby is escaping from military death squads as a refugee. Nothing warm and fuzzy there. He then sets the scene for the rest of advent by suggesting that everything that Jesus would say and do can be found in these birth stories.

2019 11 24 am: Being with Ourselves

As Steve concludes the 'Being with…' series, we hear how society struggles to be still, and are encouraged to find the space in busy lives to listen to both ourselves and God,

2019 11 17 am: Being with the troubles.mp3

How can we BE WITH The Troubles? How can we BE WITH victims? How can we BE WITH the consequences that the past has on the now? How can we build a better future? How can we hold sensitivity towards those who still suffer from the Troubles while looking at forgiveness and a compromising of justice that all conflicts have to deal with to move forward?

20191110 am: Being with Conflict

On Remembrance Sunday, Navy chaplain Brent encourages us to put ourselves in people's hurts and pains and show compassion and empathy, since that is when God starts to work and things start to change

2019 11 10 am: Being with Conflict

On Remembrance Sunday, Navy chaplain Brent encourages us to put ourselves in people's hurts and pains and show compassion and empathy, since that is when God starts to work and things start to change

2019 11 03 am: Subverting the Culture with Christoformity

Steve talks of living the way Christ lived, as Paul sets out in Romans 12, in a culture that can't be fixed, but can be redeemed

20191103 am: Subverting the Culture with Christoformity

Steve talks of living the way Christ lived, as Paul sets out in Romans 12, in a culture that can't be fixed, but can be redeemed

20191027 am sermon: Being with Culture

As Paul needs to find relevant ways to explain the Gospel to a culture in Athens not familiar with Jewish ideas, so Steve reasons that we need to listen critically to the culture around us for insight into new ways to help it hear the good news of Jesus.

2019 10 27 am sermon: Being with Culture

As Paul needs to find relevant ways to explain the Gospel to a culture in Athens not familiar with Jewish ideas, so Steve reasons that we need to listen critically to the culture around us for insight into new ways to help it hear the good news of Jesus.

2019 10 20 am: Being with Creation

Continuing our very popular BEING WITH series we welcome Jonny Hanson to preaching on BEING WITH CREATION. Steve intros by saying "Jonny is a sharp mind and radical practitioner. He is Managing Director of Jubilee Farm. Jubilee see themselves as a Christian Creation Care organisation. I believe in these days of Extinction Rebellion and Greta that Jubilee have a prophetic voice for the Church"

2019 10 13 am: Being with Jesus

Steve uses Winnie the Pooh and Snow Patrol to help enflesh Being with Jesus

2019 10 06 am: Being with the other

We continue our series on the incarnation call of Jesus to BEING WITH. This week Steve got us thinking of being with "the other". By "the other" he means anyone that seems to be different than you. Anyone across the borderlines of tension whether colour or race or religion or class. In Northern Ireland that has been traditionally in our relationships with the Nationalist/Republican/Catholic community

2019 09 29 am: Just turn up

We were thinking mainly of Uganda this morning. We heard from our Summer Mission teams and their experiences. The majority went to Onialkeu in Uganda. What were their highlights and what did they learn? Steve also asked us how we should BE WITH Onialeku in our on going BEING WITH series. You will hear the "Aftica" song by Jonny fitch, if you like it go to https://jonnyfitch.bandcamp.com/. Proceeds are going to help build a Nursery in Onialkeu.

2019 09 15 am: All because of You, I am - being with each other

What is it to be human? Steve talks Ubuntu, togetherness, relationship, and the church as God's resource for community

2019 09 08 am: Ripping Emanuel out of Christmas.mp3

As we begin a new church year and series in Fitzroy, "Being with", Steve talks to us about the advent word and its meaning and sets us off on a journey to unpack the pragmatic implications for our discipleship in our homes, Church, neighbourhood, city and world.

2019 09 01 am: Strength in Vulnerability

At the start of a new church year, Steve looks at everyday lessons from everyday events for everyday life, focussing on Jesus' teaching of the gospel lesson of radical humility

2019 08 25 am: Pursuing practical praise.mp3

Neville gets us thinking around the question "Can we truly separate what we do on a Sunday from what we do for the rest of the week?"

2019 08 18 am: Presence.mp3

Michael takes us though what is means to be present in Nature, Time and ourselves

2019 08 11 am: Try a Little Kindness

Looking at Paul's letter to the Colossians, where the writer exhorts the church to clothe themselves with virtues, especially the 'overalls of love', Paul Bowman encourages us to show kindness in our words, actions and attitudes.

2019 08 04 am

Neville talks to us about how we can build up the kingdom by investing treasure in heaven rather than on earth

2019 07 28 am: Just Keep Moving

Visiting minister Ross Lockhart compares the communion of saints, talked about in the book of Hebrews, to markers on the path of the faithful life, steering us towards Christ.

2019 07 21 am: Table Talk

Today we are so blessed to hear from one of Steves past students at Derryvolgie. We got an insight to what it was like to step into the world of Steve Stockman. Tracy brings us to Luke 10: 38-42, which looks at the home of Martha and Mary.

2019 07 14 am: Confessions of an ex-blind man

As Paul take us through John 9, he reminds us that we all love stories and are born story tellers

2019 06 30 am: To hold confidently and gently

Steve asks us who those people are that we think are so wrong that God should zap them with some righteous anger!!! James and John wanted a bit of thunderous judgement going through Samaria… BUT Jesus rebuked them. He talks us through how holiness is supposed to feed the world and NOT our own self righteousness.

2019 06 09 am: Against the Odds

On Pentecost Sunday Steve recounts tales of those how, with the Spirit's help, have succeeded against the odds, and asks how we need to live and speak so that people know what the love of God means

2019 05 26 am: Stand by me

Steve continues with the Lectionary in Jesus farewell discourses with his disciples in John. Jesus speaks a lot abut the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Who is that and what does the Paraclete do? How much is the continued wrk down to the Spirit and how much is it down to the disciples.

2019 05 19 am: A New Commandment

Steve looks at John 13, and asks "What's new about the new commandment?"

2019 05 05 am: Resurrection.mp3

Steve talks us through personal message to individuals and a general message to all of us from the last chapter of John 21. Vocation and discipleship. Jesus heals Peter into the former and invites him again into the latter with those crucial Gospel words... "Follow me". What does that like. It will be a costly challenge suggests Jesus and not as easy as saying a wee prayer after an evangelistic rally or believing a few creeds. It is about a King and a Kingdom and very upside down one at that!

2019 05 12 am: Being Known and Making Known

With John 10:22-30 as his text, Steve presses home the truth of our acceptance by a God who knows us fully, and loves us nonetheless.

2019 04 28 am: The New LIfe Starts Here

Steve talks about walking the road of Christ's life, in order to know how to live life in all its fulness.

2019 04 21 am: Mary's, Thomas's and our own resurrection moments

Steve walks us through what what resurrection meant to those who were there and then helped us look at our own resurrection moments

2019 04 07 am: I hope we all have a Clara...

Stev helps us understand the power of love. Whatever we go through in life, whether our own healing or vocational fulfilment or the transformation of our given social space, love is the energising force for redemption, restoration, reconciliation, wholeness and salvation

2019 03 31 am: Home

Steve looks at the parable of the lost son from Luke's Gospel

2019 03 24 am: The fruit of repentance

Steve takes us to the texts of Luke 13 and Isaiah 55 in the context of the incomprehensibly sad, frustrating and even angry week when we have mourned with Christchurch, New Zealand, got even more despairing and confused about Brexit and, closest to home, buried three of our northern young people in County Tyrone after the most horrendous tragedy at a Cookstown hotel on St Patrick's night. we will find Jesus not so much playing mind games with such mysteries but calling us in the midst of such...

2019 03 17 am: Redeeming Memory

Paul uses Psalm 114 to show that the right way to view memory is God-focussed, looking at the past, the present and the future through the overarching memory of His grace.

2019 03 10 am: When a Person is not a Person

Cheryl explores some of the ways in which people around the world are still disadvantaged simply because they happen to be born female, and how Jesus and Paul sought to treat people equally.

2019 03 04 am: Bathing words in glory

Steve will helps us find out that the gift of grace in Jesus is not for hoarding to ourselves, what the combination is in order to conjure a transfigured Jesus and how that Jesus then refigures us for the shadows of our world, where we might be most likely to find God.

2019 02 24 am: Being different .... Making a difference

Steve reflects on how for four decades, Fitzroy have lived a communal attack on sectarianism and in remembering our mission with the words of Jesus will re-commit to be break down walls and erase all lines that the demonic might build or draw across our city and land.

2019 02 17 am: Stories to live by

Peter talks to us about how stories and narratives change the shape of things

2019 02 10 am: Casting into the Depths of Chaos

Steve looks at Jesus' call to Peter and us to become fishers of men and to recreate community from the chaos of this broken world

2019 02 03 am: Easing the Troubled Mind: Anxiety, Trust and Peace

Gary looks at Matthew 6, and sees both a challenge to our lifestyle, and a way out of our anxieties by seeking justice for others

2019 01 27 am: Non-Conformist

Dave asks what impresses us, and how we may conform to influences that tie us up in unhelpful ways, denying us the freedom to follow Christ the way we want to. He then looks at the call to a radically different way to live that Paul exhorts in his letter to the believers in Rome

2019 01 20 am: 2:10 - The Finest of Wines

Looking at John's account of the wedding at Cana, Steve sees Jesus coming into the middle of humanity to make lives as abundant as possible, and enabling us in turn to give grace abundantly.

2019 01 13 am: The YOU in Baptism

As a child is baptised in Fitzroy and we read of Jesus' baptism in Luke, Steve considers baptism as the rehumanising of individuals as children of God, bringing healing and transformation

2019 01 06 am: Resistance, Milkman, Wiseman, God/Man!

Steve ponders the wise men and Herod, the novel Milkman, and asks if we can be discerners and distributors of resistance, fighting corruption and lies with grace-found love, causing unbelievers to begin to doubt their unbelief

2018 12 30 am - Growing in wisdom... resolving conflict and using power

2018 12 25 am: The Grinch who stole Christmas

On Christmas morning, Steve talks about the Grinch, who tried to ruin everyone's Christmas, but then began to realise that it was about more than just presents.

2018 12 09 am: No Soul Wipe

The lectionary readings of Malachi 3 and Luke 3 had Doug sharing God's desire to purify us with fire and soap from our self-indulgence and lack of motivation towards justice.

2018 12 02 am: How Long… Must We Sing This Song?

At the beginning of Advent, Steve asks what hope looks like in the text, in advent and in life.