Celebrating The Royal Wedding

On Friday Britain has a day off for the Royal Wedding and though many might be cynical of the media hype most are grateful of the holiday and an excuse to party.

For me the whole affair was rather poignant, as the day before was something of a bad news day: two friends in our church both lost loved ones at tragically young ages. But still as my parents used to say ‘life must go on’.



Asbo Jesus 1009

One project that we are involved in our community is our local In Bloom and we had a launch party for it on that afternoon. There were a couple of tents out and Nettes ran a cake decorating stall. Their was some seed planting, balloon modelling, face-painting but the aim was to let people know about our local In Bloom later this year.

Of course this wasn’t the only party on the day. Outside Ladywood Health & Community Centre – the venue our church hires for its meetings – there were some tents, stalls and also bouncy castle. 

Round the back in the Ledbury Centre - our little church building – the folks in the Drop In where glad to find somewhere that they could chill out away from the wedding celebrations. The Drop In developed out of our ministry to the homeless and some homeless guys who regularly come to the Drop In were sifting through some clothes that had been donated while others were playing snooker.

Just down the road in the Methodist Church, the local Christian charity that we have ties with, Karis Neighbour Scheme, were having their party.

Karis Neighbour Scheme

Karis do a lot of work serving people in the community generally being good neighbours. This includes work with many refugee and asylum seeker families and it was good to see some of them there.

It was really glad that I popped in to get this picture of Roo as I also saw Phillipa from Karis’s Grow Well Programme - a project that encourages health through the therapeutic effects of gardening and making contact with the natural environment. It was fortunate that she found me as she had lots of free sun flower seeds for me to take to our In Bloom launch but couldn’t find us.

For us the celebrations didn’t finish on the Friday. On Saturday a lot of us from our church piled down to Jess’s to party in the evening with drinks and nibbles.

Then on Sunday our church had a Royal Tea Party for our next Family Church – our alternative style service with fun activities for all the family. We were making bunting, table decorations and colouring in a picture of a royal banquet while discussing the meaning of Jesus parable of the wedding banquet and how God invites us to be part of his kingdom. We even sung ‘I cannot come to the banquet’ before sitting down to our feast. 

And finally, today Alex and Ellen a couple from our church are getting married and I love this description of them as ‘kingdom royalty… surrounded and supported by God's royal priesthood’, which is not only apt for this weekend but also reminds us of the wonderful truths of the Kingdom of God. A pity I forgot to charge the camera for that one. Oh well - never mind!

Phew! What a weekend! I can identify with the verger in this viral video:

God Waits Patiently

I thought it apt for the first day of Advent - a season traditionally about waiting - when at church this morning Helen spoke about how God waits patiently. It was part of a series on the characteristics of God and the series just brought us to God’s patience today but this really struck me both because of the season and because of how it spoke personally to me.

Among many verses Helen quoted 2 Peter 3:9:

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”

God is patient with his people. When we sin he could respond with anger but actually ‘he is slow to anger’ and bears with us patiently. Yes God’s timing is impeccable. He came to this earth at the right time, he will come again at the right time and he comes to us to meet our needs just at the right time - whatever we may say.

Patience is rare. We get so wound up when things don’t go fast enough or when we are driving and another driver cuts in front of us forcing us to slow down. We now live at such a pace that we cannot wait for the sort of “slow food” that was common a century or more ago. Helen gave the illustration that someone might even say “hurry up” to the microwave. By the way you might be interested Helen that there is a trend to recapture that idea of slow food. You can find out about slow food movement here and here.

God isn’t like us. His patience is unlimited. It is his nature to calmly endure delay without complaining; to wait with calmness and endurance. But amazingly as Christians we can actually be carriers of God’s patience to others – just as we can carry many of his other characteristics such as his mercy and grace to others. One memorable point was that the fact we are told in Colossians 3:12 to clothe ourselves with, amongst other things, patience indicates that it must be in our wardrobe. I also liked the little insight that we get impatient when we see a lack, a lack of time, a lack of ability, a lack of power but God doesn’t lack anything - yes of course - and with God neither do we.

So when people try our patience – as our children often do – it is to see if our patience is any good. At first it might not be but don’t be afraid they will keep giving you opportunities to develop it!

This really spoke to me not just because I am reading about advent in my own devotions but also because I becoming aware just how impatient I have sometimes been and sense that God is beginning to build this character strength in me.

Thanks for that word Helen.

Our Messy Church is called Family Church

Over August our church has doing other things such as barbecues rather than our usual Sunday gatherings. One Saturday two or three weeks ago and we did our own version of Messy Church called Family Church. "Centred around creativity, hospitality and celebration" our aim was, like Messy Church, "...to help other families that might not have any church connection to discover the fun of following Jesus together."

We had a number of activities including craft, cake decoration, street dance, sports and a spot of bike maintenance. We told the story of Zacchaeus and a number of the children – including our little daughter Callie - sung ‘I am a friend of God’. Finally we all had a meal together. There lots of new people joined us and it was a really good time.

More photos on facebook here.

This Is My Church

I have recently taken over responsibility for our church website. I just thought you might like to check it out to find out a bit more about the church that I’m involved in.


The first think that you’ll notice is that it’s got plenty of photos of us. A key to understanding Church Alive is to realise that it is based on relationships. We are in essence a group of friends who gather together in various places and ways both to enjoy each other’s company and to enjoy God.

There are also some sections on what we believe. But this is not dry doctrine. We believe that what we learn from the Bible has practical application to our workplaces, family life and neighbourhoods. And we outwork that in our relationships with each other.

An essential part of what we believe that church means people and not a building. But we do have a small building - the Ledbury Centre - situated centrally to Ladywood in Birmingham - the main urban area which we wish to reach. But most of the time we meet either in the adjacent community centre (most Sundays) or in each other’s homes (most weeks). Though we meet in the Ledbury Centre on occasions we mainly use it as a Drop In Centre one day a week.

On the website you can read about the Drop In Centre and the Ministry to the Homeless And you read about Kids Alive our weekly kids club that Nettes help run. You can follow through the link to a local charity Karis Neighbour Scheme, with which we have a long standing relationship. Through Karis we have developed relationships with people in the area including a number of asylum seekers and refugees.

Perhaps one of our main challenges comes from us being mainly (although not exclusively) white professionals living some distance from Ladywood, which is much more ethnically diverse area with a lot people of a lower socio-economic status. Yet we are finding opportunities to serve our community – particularly the people on the margins - and be like Jesus to them.

We all live very busy lives and don’t always find it easy to find time to do the things we would like to do as a church. Nevertheless I am always amazed how people give generously both of money and time volunteering.

This is my church and I am proud of it.

An Evening With A Real Live Apostle

Last week our church met with Alan Scotland. He had just returned from Thailand and mentioned how micro-industries were being set up to save children from prostitution. Alan works as an apostle and heads up Lifelink International our little network of churches.

Alan discussed with us the role of the apostle and the apostolic ministry. He looked at Ephesians 4 which talks about the ministries of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers which he saw all working together in relationship to produce growth - each ministry being like a different finger of a hand. He talked about how apostles worked together in what he called ‘apostolic companies’. These weren’t just teams working on job but companions who were also friends.

He showed that an apostle wasn’t necessarily a church planter but someone who was sent by God. This might involve pioneering but it might also involve building up the church. Alan himself spends a lot of his time in the background supporting church leaders. Having discussed this tension he went on to explain how the church itself should be apostolic. The true church is a church sent by God on a mission. ‘This mission is glocal’, he said, ‘both local and global at the same time’, as in the HSBC slogan ‘The World's Local Bank’

Alan talked about the diversity of the early apostles and discussed how today each church, he works alongside as an apostle, is unique. He mentioned Jonathon Sax’s book on diversity The Dignity of Difference and discussed how he saw this diversity in the church as being like a family – messy at times. And though it might involve fights and fall outs – it certainly did in the book of Acts – there is a great sense of purpose as we all work together for God.

UPDATE: It is worth checking out the account of Alan's recent visit to Syria with the Awareness Foundation whose work involve dialogue between Christians and Muslims. In the video Alan makes is an impassioned plea for peace in the Middle East.

The Lord’s Prayer at Celebration

Last weekend I went to the celebration event of our group of churches. Nettes & I volunteered to help with the 7-10s and so were with them most of the time. Our focus was producing a sort of frieze on large sheets of paper consisting of the words of the Lord’s Prayer that the kids decorated - in the tradition of the illuminated writing of the monks, I suppose, but using felts and glitter instead.

The kids recieved a variety of teaching methods moving round different activities. So when they came to us we were chatting about what the words meant to them or what they had learnt through the other activities as they decorated the letters. One activity I liked was when the children were given a prayer cube that they used both as a learning aid and then to pray with. And they could take these home at the end.

In the final meeting the kids presented what they had learnt and we held up the frieze and to finish off everyone at the celebration reciting the Lord’s Prayer with us.

Reflections on the Community Fun Day

I have now added a set of photos on flickr for yesterday’s Community Fun Day.

Instead of meeting on Sunday our church threw itself into supporting this event and many of us came as volunteers. This was our worship. A few helped with the set up and stewarding, Heather & Roo did face painting, I was involved with a team from our church in organising a prayer tent and my wife Nettes ran the bric-a-brac stall. The day was initiated by Karis Neighbour Scheme and lots of local organisations got together to arrange it. Everyone worked very hard. Apologies to any I have missed.

In the prayer tent we offered prayer including prayer for healing and laying on of hands. A few completed prayer-cards and posted them in the box. We had a good time praying with these cards at the end of the day. And we prayed with a few in person, anointing at least a couple of people with oil. It was good being a listening ear. People also took away some of the free resources. There were some booklets, we had printed some of Stephanie's poems on card and printed these downloads on how to pray from an excellent website called rejesus.

It was a steep learning curve for me. I'd never really done anything like this before. But I knew that a few from our church had run a prayer tent last year. So I was very greatful to have people around me who knew what they were doing. It is a lot harder than I realised to put up signs on a tent. And one problem with being in a tent is that your papers tend to blow around. It was very quiet at first and I thought that we might have no vistors. But in the end we were encouraged and felt that all who came to the tent received a blessing.

Across the site some good relationships were built with people in the community. For example, both Nettes and I had a chat with the people from our local LETS. I also met Karis's Jude Greenwood, for the first time, who among other things is an associate of Spring To Life specialising in life coaching. And through this event I met Gwen the minister of the Church of the Redeemer who mentioned that her church was starting a Messy Church.

All in all it was a great day. A special thanks to Annabel from Karis for getting this off the ground!

Getting Married in Church

Recently I went to a wedding of two of my friends from college – fellow lecturers Dave & Sally.

They wanted to get married in church and attended that church for some time in order to do so yet I don’t think they would wholeheartedly claim to be Christians. But what impressed me about their wedding was the Christian content. There was a clear talk about Christian marriage and prayers for the couple with which I felt a strong agreement.

I have been to traditional church weddings before and found them quite boring and been frustrated that the message was watered down. Perhaps this church was different or perhaps I have changed and over the years become more accepting of Christian traditions different from my own.

Like many people getting married today Dave & Sally had been living together for a while. Nowadays of course no-one bats an eyelid at an unmarried couple even signing into a hotel room together. And a forty year old virgin makes good material for a comedy.

So the idea of wanting to remain a virgin until your wedding is an unusual one. But I am not ashamed to say that that is what I did. Therefore I can understand others wanting to wait and those who become Christians who begin to learn about marriage from the Bible feeling that they should stop sleeping together until after their wedding.

But I wonder if we can also see that a relationship like my friends’ could be considered a marriage in biblical terms if the couple have already set up home? After all, Genesis 2:24 says nothing about a ceremony. People may then want to ratify such an existing relationship legally and before God. Personally, this is how I would see what Dave & Sally were doing on that day.

Congratulations to them and I pray that God will bless their marriage.

Looking forward to seeing Larry Crabb

Next weekend (March 27-29) I am planning to go to see Larry Crabb at the annual conference with the British Association of Christians in Psychology.

Larry Crabb has been very influential in developing Christian counselling. But more recently he has changed tack to emphasise the importance of building relationships and he now appears to prefer the term spiritual direction. In his book Connecting he explains how he now sees connecting with others as the key to healing rather than just the specialist relationship with a therapist or counsellor. In the conference he will be speaking about his journey into this understanding.

This looks very interesting. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Role of the Church in the Current Recession

Here are three Christian links I am looking at that are relevant to our current global economic crisis:

Are You Recession Ready? discusses how it time for the church to start thinking about getting ready for the recession. This might involve things like looking at how we handle our money and how we give to and serve the poor.

Bible on Money is a very good page of the Generous Giving website that points to a list of key Bible verses. Click on each verse for comments.

Mission and Recession is another good article on the way forward for the church at this time. Please note that this article has a second part.

I feel that handling money is something that our church has some practical wisdom on and teaches well. This together with the fact that we are involved in ministry to the homeless indicates to me that we are getting there. Reading these articles suddenly made what we do feel very relevant.

Thanks to Andrew Jones for pointing to these links on his blog.

Wisdom of the Swarm

On Saturday night, Hugh Thompson facilitated a discussion with a group of us in our church. After tucking into some chilli we were soon passing the microphone around unpacking some Bible verses together. We looked at, among other things, the ants from Proverbs.

Wisdom of the Swarm was just one his sub-headings. ‘Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer;’ (Proverbs 30:25). Why do they do this when they ‘have no ruler’ (Proverbs 6:6)? Just like ‘the locusts that have no king yet advances together in ranks’ (Proverbs 30:27). How do these creatures work together in unity?



Hugh described a video like this one. He then explained that just as the individual synapses communicate chemically in the brain so ants communicate by pheromones and act like one collective mind. In the same way we corporately as the church have ‘the mind of Christ’ as we hear God together and operate as his body.

On the way home we were still discussing this principle of synergy - if we all work together we can achieve things that we could never achieve separately.

Hugh quoted the lyrics of RyanDan’s High:

If we all work together
We would be stronger
If we all open our eyes
We could see further
If we all stand tall enough no one can beat us
If we all hold our hands up high we can carry the world.

So this week I’ve been playing this song on Spotify - my new music streaming application - while watching videos, like the one above, full screen on YouTube. Why not try it? If you haven’t yet got Spotify just can now just click on the link to sign up for the free version.

Scrolls In The Desert

During the week our church meets in each others homes. As the groups are arranged at present Nettes & I are in a group with all the other parents. This gives us a chance to discuss parenting issues. Last Thursday we organised an evening that we called ‘Scrolls in the Desert’. We had a number of conversation starters partly buried on a tray of sand. The scrolls included a Bible study plan and a page from a parenting course and there were a few books too. We had a really good discussion to what extent our experience of parenting was like a desert or an oasis as people pulled items out of the sand. The dining table was our oasis for the evening where nibbles, cheese, wine, beer and juices were available for refreshment. Interestingly the juices were hardly touched!

Sea Parable

Sea Parable is a moving little three minute cartoon by Andi Mac that encapsulates all of Church history and the Church's reluctance to evangelise. It really packs a punch.

Thanks to Jonny Baker for this link.

Churches really are working together

Tomorrow and the following Friday I’m covering for Helen in our Drop-In while she and Steve go to Africa for a week. You may recall that I blogged about the Drop-In and our mission to the homeless just before Christmas. But what stuck me today was that fact that there will be other Christians there: Christians who are not part of our church or our network.

Christians from different churches working together is not new. But over the past few years we seem to have increasingly been involved in outworking this idea. For instance, just before Christmas we were involved in a massive food parcel programme with a couple of other churches in our neighbourhood through Hope 08.

It’s not just in one off projects that we are getting to work together. There are couple of people in our church that work for Karis Neighbour Scheme. This is a Christian based charity that works with a number of churches showing neighbourly acts of kindness. It was featured on Secret Millionaire last year. My wife also organises a crèche for the ESOL classes that Karis runs. Through this and Karis’s Welcome to Ladywood project we have had the privilege of meeting refugees and asylum seekers who have come to Birmingham.

We also know people through an organisation called Restore that encourages people in a number of churches to befriend asylum seekers.

And now we're involved in a Drop-In and ministry to the homeless that are also supported by Christians from other churches. Yes, we really are all working together to serve our community.


Update: I've now created a set for the Drop-In on flickr.

Down and Out in Birmingham

On Thursday afternoon, I went round the city centre with Paul Atkin giving out some presents to some homeless guys. Between us we must have given away about a dozen packages, each containing a hat, a scarf, a pair of gloves, and a pair of socks, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and deodorant. Many of the guys shook our hands and one even gave us a big hug. He said that he had wanted some gloves for some time and that it was lovely to wear a new woollen hat. Many of us had donated the contents and Paul had already given out lots of these presents and has since packed some more. Paul knows these guys as he has been working with them for about ten years now.

Paul came to our church when he married Jackie this year. Our little daughter Callie was one of their bridesmaids. Since then our church has launched a ministry to the homeless headed up by Paul and Jackie. They spend their time talking to people and helping people in practical ways such as showing them the right forms to fill in to get a flat or distributing clothes, blankets and sleeping bags that have been donated.

On Fridays, we use our little church building as a Drop In Centre. People will come for a coffee & sandwiches, play pool or dominoes and to do some art. I have been dropping in myself for half an hour or so most weeks and mixing with the people. This Friday, Steve our church elder, made us all a glorious curry as a Christmas treat. There was about thirty of us there and we knew that several would be sleeping on the streets that night. We have seen a number of people from the Drop In join us in our Sunday church gatherings at the community centre. And not surprisingly last week there were many there for our church’s Christmas dinner. It is just great to be around these people.

There is a very good account of what we are doing ministering to the homeless in Birmingham, from the website for our network of churches – Lifelink International. It is worth watching the videos. They are not just people talking. There are some good shots of the Drop In and the work on the streets. It gives you the flavour of what we are doing.

My Easter Holidays

Hi! Today I am doing some shopping including getting stuff for a salad and a couple of pineapples for a ‘bring and share’ meal at our church on Sunday. You see this weekend is our church weekend at home. That’s right - at home. It’s like our weekend away but instead of going miles away to a residential conference centre we’ve hired the premises of big church in Birmingham for Saturday and then are at our usual Sunday venue a bit longer. We’ve got guest speakers for the adults and the children, competitions, a talent show and chillout time as well as lots of meals together. Most are catered for except for the 'bring and share' on Sunday.

Just as our weekend away did before - this marks the end of our Easter holidays, which have gone too quickly. The Thursday before Good Friday, Nettes & I took the homegroup in a simple time of remembering the cross using some story telling with some slides on our laptop. On Saturday Callie helped build the Easter Garden - at a local parish church - to be used in an Easter Vigil service later that day, which I went to - just like last year. This year I also went to early morning communion there before getting to our pre-meeting prayer time before anyone else. As a family we later had a wonderful roast lamb for dinner that Nettes cooked this time.

When I’ve had chance over the holidays I’ve been drafting out some thoughts on the theme of identifying with Jesus. These thoughts use some of my insights from psychology in looking at the Bible’s accounts of Jesus. I think these may make it into the blog one day as an occasional series of articles loosely gathered on this theme. They might include such ideas of our longing for Jesus, the incarnation, Jesus’ mission, spiritual disciplines, the atonement, living the resurrection life, the body of Christ and our longing for his return. But this is a long term plan so don’t hold your breath.

BTW I've just noticed that David Matthew has been reading some interesting books on atonement and justification.

Is the Use of Holy Spirit Gifts in Decline?

Several weeks ago Nettes forwarded me an email from a friend of hers Alison Hull who was writing an article for Christianity magazine and asking people for comments. The article was about the charismatic churches discussing the decline in the use of gifts of the spirit that she has noticed. I emailed Ali my observations and thoughts and amazingly a quote from my email wound up in the article along with a number of quotes from Christian leaders and ex-leaders. My response was as follows:

“Though it may not be exactly what you were after these are my honest thoughts on the subject in our situation. In a small church like ours I would say that how people use gifts in public meetings changes as people with different gifts, styles and temperaments come and go. It is also the case that we all hopefully grow in our own faith and experience of God over time so it is difficult to be objective about such trends. That said, I have noticed some possible changes over the past ten years or so…”

It was this next part of my answer that was quoted. ”…The way people speak nowadays is much more down to earth and less hyped than it used to be. I don't hear people whipping up the crowd with meaningless jargon anymore. I think we are less dogmatic that everyone's experience, for instance with baptism with the Spirit, should be the same, and I also feel that we are now on a verge of beginning to use people's gifts in more creative planned activities. I wonder if these changes simply reflect changes in society as a whole that is more sceptical of hype and more tolerant of differences and desire more creativity.”

The full article is called 'Hands Down' and is the lead article in the March issue of Christianity. You can read it here if you have a subscription. Otherwise you will need to see if you can find any copies of this issue that have not sold out yet.

Sunday School Church

My wife Nettes and I have just led another family service. This time it our remit was for the kids in Sunday school – which Nettes leads - to share what God had been teaching them. After talking to the kids we came up with a service that basically followed the pattern of what we do in Sunday school with songs interspersed throughout the morning.

First one of the boys went round with a roving microphone asking people what had been happening to them that week. Then we played a game based around John 3:16 which the children had been learning, which brought out the competitive side of the church. We then told the story of Jonah with a couple of children reading. Then we got everyone to discuss and possibly have a go at acting it out in small groups. We then got people out of their seats doing a choice of craft activities based on the story or looking through some of the Sunday school material. We were amazed how much people participated and felt that we had broken through a barrier of getting people to do different activities in church. All this was supported by PowerPoint with photos of the children, their work and quotes from them about what they had recently learnt about God.

We were really blessed with an email we received just after the service saying from a couple saying how much fun they had and that they came away grinning.

Church Weekend Away

We’ve just got back from our church weekend away at Cloverley Hall. It was great to get see our old friend Detta - who now lives in Glastonbury. It was our pleasure to ferry her from and to Crewe station.

It was good to start Saturday off with a prayer time as I'd missed Friday's meeting putting Callie to bed. After breakfast we listened to Ian Rawley on a term that has been so overused in our circles as to become meaningless: being a prophetic people. Refreshingly he reinterpreted this as neither withdrawing from our culture or being so immersed in it that we become ineffective but instead being shapers of our culture.

In the second half Carole Rawley did an exposition of Ephesians based on Watchman Nee’s ‘Sit, Walk, Stand’. After lunch and after the Easter egg hunt - for which Callie got a runners’ up prize for her basket - we had a reflective workshop session. There were four stations with various questions and activities relating to what we had been looking at. I chose to identify three scriptures to stand in prayer with. I felt to pick Luke 10:2-3, Proverbs 6:6-5 and Ecclesiastes 11:6 on the theme of work and harvest. All this and a talent show in the evening with Nettes and Callie performing 'Eat Your Peas'. What a day.

Thankfully the Sunday morning prayer meeting was 8:30 rather than 8:00. After breakfast there was worship and reports from areas of the church. Then Steve, our elder, spoke on increasing our involvement in the community around where we meet and working in partnership with other organisations and churches. Over lunch I was thrilled to hear from the creche workers that Callie had been asking deep spiritual questions. And in the afternoon we broke bread and briefly prayed about some issued raised that morning - again using four prayer stations - before departing.

Phew! A great weekend!

Children's Work Conference

Yesterday, Nettes and I drove down to Dunstable for a Children’s Workers Conference which asked some hard hitting questions like ‘Have you read your church’s child protection policy?’ and ‘How does your church engage the children in worship while they are in the main meeting?’

Guest speaker John Hardwick stressed the value of keeping families together on Sunday. I thought that he did a good job pointing out an important key getting all ages involved: story-telling. Stories can work on many levels teaching deep principles and keeping us entertained at the same time. He encouraged us to think of creative ways to tell Bible stories, such as imagining a story from many perspectives, as well as including other creative elements such as hot-spot interviews, action memory verses and even BSL signing. He also suggested having a planning team for All Age Services that included all ages i.e. at least one child.

Sam Donohue from Viz-a-viz talked about his work doing school assembles, RE lessons and after-school clubs. I liked the way that he explained the importance of not coming over too dogmatic by having class discussions and prefixing your statements with ‘I believe....’ and ‘Some Christians think....’ etc. I thought this was a good point for generally for chatting with your friends too. Interestingly he thought that using items that the church finds cringe-worthy and hackneyed, like drama sketches and puppets, could work well in mission work with kids who are seeing them for the first time.

A good day albeit tiring.