This Sunday we are going to start reading a letter to a young church. That’s appropriate, because St Peter’s of the Rock is a pretty young church. But this letter was not originally written to us – it was written to a new church in the city of Thessalonica (still there today as Thessaloniki in the Macedonia region of modern Greece).

The Apostle Paul, one of the leaders amongst Jesus’ early followers, had visited the city with some travelling companions, and had a pretty rough time of it. But through his time there, a group of people became convinced that Jesus Christ was the true answer to their hopes and the one truly worthy of their allegiance and trust. Not long later, Paul wrote to this young community, this young church – he wrote the letter which we have in our Bibles as 1 Thessalonians.

So over the coming Sundays our young church is going to start reading this letter to that other young church, and considering carefully what we can learn from it – as through it, we believe, God will speak to us as he did to them. While this letter was not originally written to us, it was written for us. And it was written for you – everyone is welcome to join us as we learn from this wonderful letter, we’d love to see you there.