by Ivor Thomas Rees

These eighteen years of retirement have proved a time of blessing as well as of enjoyment. The only times in a year when I really miss being minister of a church are during Holy Week/Easter and at Christmas. Sunday, 6 October 2013 marked the retirement of the Revd. Kim Fabricius from the pastorate of Bethel United Reformed Church, Sketty, Swansea, where he had exercised an outstanding ministry since his ordination in 1982. On the following Sunday the Bethel congregation began worshipping each Sunday with the congregation of Sketty Methodist Church and sharing the weekday activities, as we went through the process of becoming a local ecumenical partnership. Then, in May 2015, the Uniting Church, Sketty, came into being. This has been a wonderful time, greatly appreciated all the members of this new congregation of Christ’s people. We have been richly blessed by the ministry of the Revd. Lesley Noon, who came to Sketty from Huddersfield in 2013 to lead us in our pilgrimage.

Nonetheless, at Christmas I still miss the in-depth preparation involved for Advent and Christmas worship.

Perhaps it was that which impelled into thinking of writing this book on Christmas, following on Pathway to the Cross, published in 2012. I can but pray that reading it will prove something of the same blessing as researching and writing it.

It was suggested that I added questions at the end of each chapter in case readers or groups wished to discuss them.

Ivor Thomas Rees

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Pathway to the Stable

Ideal for individuals or groups seeking a deeper understanding of the Christmas story and its links with the Hebrew Bible, Pathway to the Stable offers a twenty-first century introduction to the people and places central to the story of the birth of Jesus, with reference to the promises of the Old Testament and its setting in the contemporary Jewish and Roman worlds.

'In this rich and rewarding series of studies, Ivor Rees has taken us deep into the biblical world in order to show us once more the glory of the coming of Our Lord, the nativity and childhood of Jesus Christ.'
Revd. D. Densil Morgan, Professor of Theology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

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