My maternal grandmother died of a heart attack when I was a teenager. She was the quintessential grandma: every morning she would have the wood stove stoked long before anyone else was up so the kitchen was snug and cosy. She was kind and patient. Best of all, as a late-night snack, she would whip up these delicious cheese sandwiches: soft, white bread cut into triangles (with the crusts cut off, of course!) She was married to my grandfather for 44 years. Several years after she died, I asked my grandfather how he was going. He answered: “The evenings are the worst. It’s too quiet. It’s the silence that kills me”.

Silence is not always profound, or welcome, or spiritual. Sometimes it just sucks!

Like when you’ve been to every specialist under the sun and there is no answer to your pain.

Like when your child is backpacking in South America and you haven’t heard from her in three weeks.

Like when you turn the key in the car’s ignition and nothing happens.

Or, like when you pray, you plead, you petition God and he answers not a word.

Sometimes silence is not golden.

~ Pastor John Strelan

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Duthy Street.

Someone needs to teach Google Maps how to pronounce Duthy St. (it’s not Duh-thee, it’s Doo-thee!) But, that’s beside the point.

Duthy Street. Every workday between 8-8.30am and 5-5.30pm Doo-thee Street is transformed by the sound of progress, of productivity, of advancement, of achievement, of energy, of power, of modern life! I crack open my office window and hear it. Traffic noise. People busily, and importantly, going places. Often places so important that there is only one person in each car! Buses rumbling, motorcycles revving, the modified exhaust of that souped-up sports car popping, even electric cars aren’t silent, their tires hum on the asphalt. And, in all those vehicles radios are blaring, speaker phones are intruding, kids are arguing on the way to school, Google maps is pronouncing street names wrong. It’s the soundtrack of modern life as we all try to be somewhere.

But, Duthy Street at 10pm on any weeknight is a different story. I can stand in the middle of the road without a car in sight (and I occasionally do). I don’t have to be anywhere, I can just be. And, it’s quiet. So quiet. So quiet it’s profound. Even spiritual!

~ Pastor John Strelan

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If you are unable to access spotify, 2026 sermon recordings can be found here

What’s in a word? Amen. That’s the word I’m talking about. Amen.

What’s in a word?

At the end of each sentence we are used to seeing a mark, or a symbol. Punctuation we call it. Fullstop. Question Mark? Exclamation mark!

Is that what Amen is? A bit of punctuation at the end of the sentence? A mark to tell us the prayer is over?

Amen is an ancient word – thousands of years old – handed down unchanged from ancient Hebrew through to ancient Greek through to modern English and many other languages. Amen. It is an expression of confidence, of faith, of trust, that what is said is true. It is an expression of agreement, of solidarity, of participation. It is a promise of commitment, of assurance, of engagement. It shall be so! Amen.

Notably, Jesus used Amen not at the end of his sentences but at the beginning! Often twice, just to make sure no one was in any doubt.

In fact, Jesus himself is the Amen. Our Amen. And God’s last word to us in the Bible is Amen (Revelation 22:21).

I don’t think that’s just punctuation.

~ Pastor John Strelan

Click here for a link to our new spotify podcast containing the latest sermon recordings.

If you are unable to access spotify, 2026 sermon recordings can be found here