My warmest welcome to the start of another year at Kennedy Baptist College.
New Beginnings are such an amazing space to be in. Things feel fresh, there’s a shine on everything, and there’s a stressful yet enjoyable expectation for the most ordinary things. 2026 at Kennedy has all the feelings of ‘new’, making the start of the year feel fun and hopeful. But 2026 is also the start of just another year, and very soon the newness will be gone, and we will be looking forward to when things can feel that way again.
This rhythm of life fascinates me. Our human nature is on full display through the cycle of new becoming common and dull. There’s a line in the poem, Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth that captures the fading of humanity’s wonder and glory as we age. At one point Wordsworth writes, “But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home;” but as we grow the poem suggests, “At length the Man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day.” This suggests we can lose sight of the wonder of life, where the sparkle of newness can become drudgery.
Our heart at Kennedy this year is to maintain a community of several thousand people that all lift each other up, so that we don’t lose sight of the “clouds of glory” we were made with. Our aim this year is to strive to lift vision and to help us do this we will start our year reading and feeding on the most powerful message ever spoken and written, The Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, chapters 5, 6 and 7. This sermon has lifted human hearts for several thousand years and a regular dose of glory will do us all some good.
Please feel free to join with us and enjoy this 20-minute read in the bible as often as you can, it may even bring the change many are hoping for as we start this new year.
Peter Chase
College Chaplain • Pastoral Care
