When violent persecution scattered the first believers from Jerusalem, it looked like disaster. Yet wherever they fled, the good news took root — and at Antioch, a crossroads city buzzing with trade and languages, something new was born: a young, diverse, dynamic church that would change the world.In this sermon on Acts 11, Revd. Mark Fletcher traces how Christianity got its name. It was at Antioch that believers were first called "Christians" — a word coined by outsiders as an insult, meaning "little Christs", and marking out those who refused to worship Caesar. Why would anyone gladly embrace a name meant to mock them?We live in a world that still asks us where our ultimate loyalty lies. Like the church at Antioch, we are called to welcome the outsider, to invest in good and humble leadership, and to keep learning — never to go it alone. And we are invited to wear this name proudly: to belong to Christ and reject the false gods of our age.What's in a name? Perhaps everything.Full transcript and video: https://stpeters.ch/sermons/first-called-christians/
On a dusty wilderness road, a powerful Ethiopian official rides home from Jerusalem, puzzling over the words of Isaiah. He is a man who has sacrificed everything for his career, an outsider who came close to God but never quite belonged. And he is reading about a mysterious suffering servant he simply cannot understand. Then God sends Philip to run alongside his chariot and ask one simple question: "Do you understand what you are reading?"In this sermon from Acts 8:26-40, Revd. Mark Fletcher shows how Jesus is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 — written 600 years before he lived — and why faith is never just believing, but stepping out and acting on that belief.We live in a world where God is already at work, where people are hungry for deeper truth. Who are you being called to walk alongside right now? And when the official asks, "What can stand in the way of my being baptised?" the answer is: nothing — not sin, not doubt, not unanswered questions.So what is standing in the way of you?Full transcript and video: https://stpeters.ch/sermons/philip-and-the-ethiopian/
Saul was "breathing out murderous threats" against the followers of Jesus — an ambitious, brilliant young Pharisee, certain he was doing God's work as he travelled to Damascus to root out the early Christians. Then a light flashed from heaven, and everything he thought he knew came crashing down.In this sermon on Acts 9, Revd. Mark Fletcher traces how Saul became Paul: humbled, blinded for three days, and called as Christ's chosen instrument to the nations. It is a study in pride undone by grace. The greatest obstacle to faith, Mark suggests, is often not our doubts or our sins, but our pride. To confess "Jesus is Lord" is to confess "I am not."We all build a world we want to control. We trust in our own strength and resist being humbled. Yet God uses who we already are — our gifts, character and background — and remakes them in the way of Christ.You are not called to be Paul. But you are called. What are you called to be?Full transcript and video: https://stpeters.ch/sermons/conversion-of-saul/
On Thursday 4 June, every pew at St Peter's was taken. Around 150 people gathered despite the rain to hear the St Salvator's Chapel Choir of the University of St Andrews open its 2026 Swiss tour.St Salvator's Chapel Choir is one of Britain's oldest and most distinguished university choirs. The University of St Andrews was founded in 1413, and the choir's history reaches back to those earliest years, when students were obliged to sing in the university chapel as the Choristi Sanctiandree. Today around twenty-five mixed voices sing three services each week in St Salvator's Chapel, under their director Claire Innes-Hopkins FRCO.The programme traced five centuries of sacred choral music — from the Renaissance polyphony of Thomas Tallis through Vaughan Williams and Walton to contemporary composers including Bob Chilcott — following the church's year through Lent, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. The three Campbell Watterson Organ Scholars played Bach on St Peter's 1917 Goll organ, funded by readers of The Times of London following an appeal by the Revd Dudley Lampen, for the soldiers interned at Château-d'Œx during the First World War. The evening closed with Scotland the Brave, followed by an encore of Loch Lomond.The choir is a real mix of nationalities, and two choristers — native French and German speakers — introduced pieces in their own languages, which suited the trilingual character of the local audience. "You can really tell when people like your performance," said one of the choristers, Grace. Rachel, from Chicago, on her first trip to Switzerland, called it "an exceptional audience, particularly with the immediate feedback they gave."From St Peter's the choir went on to sing in Bern, Neuchâtel and Romainmôtier, joining Ensemble La Chapelle Saint-Marc for Handel's Dixit Dominus on the final dates. St Peter's is proud to have opened the tour, and glad that so many from the Pays-d'Enhaut and the Saanenland turned out to give the choir such a warm welcome.St Peter's holds Evening Worship every Sunday at 5:30 PM, and warmly welcomes visitors and residents alike.
