Thursday 21 January 2016

The Cost to the Butterfly

Do you know what imaginal discs are?

In 1 Corinthians 15: 35-58 the apostle Paul seeks to explain the difference between our earthly bodies and our post-resurrection being.  He uses planted seed as an illustration.  What goes into the ground is not the same as that which later emerges.  I wonder what he might have written to those who have some idea of cell development and DNA.  Obviously, Paul drew on material with which they were familiar.  

Recently I found myself pondering on the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.  The cartoon is used under a licence and should not be copied please.

During its life cycle as a caterpillar, it will gorge itself on leaves with a voracious appetite.  It has only that one driving force until the time comes when it starts to weave and becomes a chrysalis.  Then something truly amazing takes place. The body of the caterpillar dissolves into a kind of soup.  But this contains ‘imaginal discs’ which are the basis from which other cells develop producing eyes, wings and everything else a butterfly will need.  Then one day, out of the soup of what was something new and splendid emerges.

The cost to the butterfly is virtually losing its old identity and structure.  While this might be a helpful illustration of life beyond this life when we shall be changed and made like our Saviour, it also speaks to me about how we should be progressing in our Christian lives here and now.  I began 2016 reflecting on God’s call to Abram (see Genesis 12: 1-3).  This is Abram’s first encounter with God and is the foundation for all that will follow in his life, in the lives of the People of Israel, and all that follows to us today.  It starts with the call to leave. God has things to show him and wonderful promises to give him but the first step is leaving where he is.

During the years in which I have sought to walk with God he has periodically called me to let go of what I treasured and to leave the comfort of the place to which he has brought me.  It has never been easy.  But each time, leaving what was created the opportunity to experience what could be.

I wonder how much is missed of the blessing of God because of Christians attachment to what is and the refusal to let go.  I wonder how much blessing has been missed in churches that cling to the comfort of the past. Perhaps if a caterpillar knew that he would basically have to digest itself and dissolve it might not be too keen to start weaving that cocoon.  Change is usually very costly in one way or another, but if God is calling you to let things go, take care that you do not miss what could be in the future. What might be the imaginal discs that help build the future?

Do you have friends who are not Christians?

Do you wish your friends shared your faith or that you could share your faith with them?  Most UK Christians value their faith but talking about it is a different matter.  If this is true of you, please do not miss the opportunity to join me in a free online seminar on Friendship Evangelism.  It is being held at 7.30pm next Wednesday 27th January and repeated on Monday 8th at 7.30pm.  It lasts just 45 minutes.  You can simply watch and listen or ask questions.

To ‘attend’ the seminar from the comfort of your home you need to book in advance.  It will cost you nothing.  You will be asked for your name and email address but you are not joining anything and will not suddenly find yourself receiving unsolicited emails.  You provide this information so that you can receive the special link.  Use that link a few minutes before the scheduled start of the seminar and follow the instructions on screen.  This might involve downloading a ‘launch programme’.  This is perfectly safe.

People who previously attended this particular online seminar said that it was very interesting and helpful.  People who have learned to share their faith always talk about how it has also helped their faith to grow.  I would love to help you to confidently share your faith in a way that would not be embarrassing.  So please sign up to attend today (spaces are limited) and spread the word to other Christian friends who might find this helpful.

Click this link to register your place for the seminar

For Praise and Prayer

I have appreciated prayers for the three occasions this month when I have attended funerals.  The latest one was this week for an aged aunt in Hastings. Our thoughts and prayers are for those who heel the loss most keenly.

Deep appreciation was expressed by the 30 Salvation Army Cadets (officers in training) at the William Booth College on Wednesday where I had taken part in the Safeguarding training.  I teach three sessions exploring how and why sexual abuse can happen in a Christian context, and how to support those who have been victims.  Understanding enables us to have safer churches. I continue to be impressed with the high standards of the Salvation Army.  I also give thanks that one larger denomination has increased its safeguarding team from one part-time person to seven full time people.  Bad practise in the past leaves much still to be done in this area of pastoral acre and action.

I have been having some useful pastoral conversations with some of the men at HMP Gartree where I work most Tuesday afternoons.  I shall be taking the Sunday Service for them on 31st January.

Please keep Yelvertoft Congregational Church in your prayers as we process through various stages that will enable me to retire from that aspect of ministry in the very near future.

Give thanks that important work I have been doing for Action for Christ (Rural Evangelism) has been successful.  Pray for the trustees as we seek God’s guidance for the future of this organisation that has an exciting history but now faces changes.

Please pray that many will avail themselves of the opportunity to attend the online seminar on Friendship Evangelism next Wednesday.  Imagine what might happen if only more had the understanding, confidence and courage to share their faith with others. I would love to tell you that we had so many requests to attend this seminar that we have to repeat it through the year.

Please pray for my wider work within the Congregational Federation.  Currently I chair the Inter-Church Board and am a member of the Pastoral Care Board.  I am also part of the Mission Support Group for the East Midlands Area.  I need to review how much time I can commit to these roles and value prayers for wisdom so that I focus on what God wants me to do.  Sometimes it is better to do less and do it better!  There are some encouraging opportunities to help the churches in the East Midlands Area.

Please give thanks for the faithfulness of friends who though their prayers and practical support keep us serving the Lord.

Thank you for your friendship and prayers.

Barry


Friday 8 January 2016

Microsoft Backs Evangelists

Microsoft Promotes Evangelism

If this is something new to you then you are likely to be surprised as much as I was when I heard this.  However, before you get too excited, please read on. Like other biblical terms the word “evangelist” has been hijacked to describe a secular activity.  Here is a description of this kind of role from Wikipedia:

“A [technology] evangelist promotes the use of a particular product  or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism due to the similarity of relaying information about a particularset of beliefs with the intention of converting the recipient.”


So how do you feel about the use of the word being adapted in this way.  Personally, I am wondering whether it could prove positive.  The “E-word” began to become unpopular in many churches at the start of the 1980s.  For this reason, the last major Billy Graham Mission in the UK was called Mission England avoiding terms like evangelism, crusade or campaign.  Could the term now become rehabilitated by its use in a secular context?

The word, evangelist, simply means someone who has good news to share.  It is not the word that is the problem but the image.  Take this cartoon, for example, which I use in order to help people articulate negative feelings about evangelism (I own the rights to the cartoon).  Certain TV evangelists have also helped to create a poor and unhelpful image of what evangelism is really about.  My opinion is that if something labelled evangelism does not come across as good news then it cannot be evangelism.

The secular word has been misusing the term evangelical for some time, in my opinion.  They have used it to describe someone who is passionate about something, so perhaps they would have done better to have said, evangelistic.  Again, sadly, the term evangelical has sometimes been used negatively as defining a rather extreme and unattractive kind of Christian.  For me, and evangelical is someone whose faith has the good news or gospel at its heart, and who has particular respect for scripture. 19th Century evangelicals were world-changers campaigning against slavery and promoting much social good.  They were not aggressive bigots.

While I am happy for biblical terms to be used appropriately in a secular context, and am excited by the use of evangelist by Microsoft, I don’t wish to give away the use of these words within a Christian context.  I want to see them recovered correctly.  Perhaps what we need to do is to take a hard look at who we are, what we believe, how we live and what we say and ask, “Is all of this GOOD News?” But the adjective, good, should be from the perspective of those observing or hearing us, rather than how we define ourselves.

Last year I began running a programme entitled “Friendship Evangelism”. An introduction to the programme is one of our free online seminars (webinars) and it is also available as a one-day course for churches.  The aim is to encourage ordinary Christians to be good news and confidently and lovingly seek to help those they care about to come to know Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour.  Please note that we are running the introductory online seminar again later this month.  Whether or not you are comfortable about sharing your faith the opportunity to watch this on your computer could prove a valuable investment of 45 minutes.

If the term evangelist is not to be lost to the world we need many more ordinary Christians who can become comfortable sharing the good news in gentle and winsome ways.  Do you need to become one of these?  If so, please sign up for the free webinar.  Or you might be a church leader with people who are less than confident in sharing their faith; then you too should find this webinar helpful



For praise and prayer this week

We thank God for his blessing at the burial and subsequent Thanksgiving Service for the life of John Bradley, a former trustee and long-term supporter of Rural Mission Solutions.  John was a greatly loved Methodist Minister with a heart of the wider church.  He wrote his own “last words” which were read at the Thanksgiving Service.  Do please read them.

Over recent months I have lost three former colleagues who have gone to be with the Lord.  Please remember those closest to them at this time.

This Saturday, 9th January, members of Yelvertoft Congregational Church meet to reflect on the implications from my plan to retire as their Minister later this year.  Join me in thanking God for this church and its work in the village and surrounding area.  Pray for wisdom.

Please pray for Doreen (my wife) as she undergoes further tests this weekend to discover the cause for chronic gastric problems.

Please pray for the work on Obambo, Kenya and for Nigel Lindsay who will be travelling to there on 13th January.  The loss of my colleague, Monica Cook, is keenly felt both in Kenya and in the UK Friends of Obambo team.

Give thanks for continued prayer and financial support for the Children’s Department of Sunrise Ministries and put your prayers behind finding a competent person with a heart for rural ministry to head up this work.

Give thanks for the completion of important work required for Action for Christ.  This took up much time during December and we now await an important communication from a government department.  Once this has been received, the trustees of AFC (which includes me) will start to take prayerful steps regarding the future of that rural ministry.

Tuesday 12th January I will take a school assembly followed by regular ministry at HMP Gartree.

Saturday 16th January “Get Messy” (Messy Church) at Yelvertoft with an all-age service on the following day.

Give thanks for the encouragement from those who attended the online seminars in 2015.  These were held on Saturday morning and we are experimenting to find the day and time most suitable for those who could benefit from these webinars.  Please pray as these need to be scheduled throughout 2016.

Thank you for your friendship, fellowship and support.


Barry

Friday 1 January 2016

Change is here to stay

Some years ago, as part of my Open University Management Studies, one of the modules dealt with the management of change.  A catch phrase in those days was “Change is here to stay”.  I thought then, and have done since, that this ought to be a banner or poster put up inside every church.  As we enter into this New Year I find myself reflecting on the topic once again, most importantly as far as it relates to my own life.

New Year has traditionally been a time for making resolutions.  Most of these express aspirations for personal change.  I could think of dozens of changes that that are needed in my life but, knowing how hard it is to maintain such needed changes I plan to keep them all in mind and do the best I can through the year without actually encapsulating them into a resolution.  I certainly do not intend to bore you with a long list of things in my life that need improvement!

Something I read recently did make me think about the fact that some Christians will have resolved to do more for God or make more time for in 2015.  It was, “We are not saved by the promises we make to God, but by trusting the promises he has made to us”. Sometimes we try too hard to make ourselves more spiritual or holy, when the desired outcome cannot be achieved by self-effort.  

I remember at a time as a teenager, vexed by what I saw as besetting sin, I was sitting on Hastings’ sea front watching the incoming waves.  There are a number of granite groins along the beach that stretch into the sea functioning as breakwaters.  As I prayed I seemed to hear God say,” Watch the waves.” As watched I noticed that as the wave first encountered the breakwater it washed over to the other side.  But as the wave got further up the beach it was no longer washing over but had become separated from the other side.  I then felt God saying that sanctification was achieved not by self-effort to change but by pressing ever closer into union with God.  This wave (me) is still pressing forward with some way to go!

We have an unchanging and unchangeable God who is in the business of changing people.  In our relationship with God change will always be here to stay until that ultimate moment when we shall be so changed that we find ourselves in his presence and like our wonderful Saviour.  Doreen, my wife, reflects that, prior to her responding to Gods offer of forgiveness and salvation, her speech was marked by constant swearing which had given her notoriety.   After some time, she suddenly realised she no longer swore.  In 40 years of marriage I have never heard her swear. It was a token of the change God brings when we open ourselves up to him.

Sometimes we get worked up by the lack of change within the organisational life of our churches where, far too often, things have to be done the way they have ‘always been done’.  Doubtless we all know that the last words of a dying church were “We have always done it this way!”.  When responding to a request to serve what became our second church, I asked the small congregation whether they were open to change.  I was immediately asked in what way I wanted them to change, and had to point out that was not the issue.  What mattered was whether the congregation was open to hear from God and act in obedience as that always brings change.  Happily, they assured Doreen and me that they were and so began one of the most exciting phases in 50 years of Christian ministry.

So my New Year’s challenge (to myself and to you) is to start now by opening ourselves up more and more to God, enjoying sharing his life and his sharing in ours.  A man stood watching a sculptor as he worked away on a large block of stone to produce a statue of a horse. The man watched fascinated as the sculptor seemed to chip away bits of stone slowly revealing the form of the horse.  “How do you do that?” he asked in wonder.  The sculptor replied, I just remove anything that doesn’t look like a horse!”
Be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet!

Items for Praise
  • Give thanks for God graciously using a still imperfect servant through the past year.  Give thanks for all who have found salvation or moved closer to God.
  • Give thanks for God’s faithfulness in providing for our needs and keeping us safe in our journeys.
  • Give thanks for the band of good friends who care about us and pray for us.
  • Give thanks for blessings received personally while serving in four pastorates in Hastings, Herstmonceux, Theddingworth, and Yelvertoft, and for the good folk that continue the work in those churches.

Items for prayer
  • That I will be so filled with the Holy Spirit that wherever I go something of God spills from my life to bless others.
  • That I will always be open to God and able to hear his voice.
  • For guidance in Sunrise Ministries as we seek to fill staff gaps and look to God that the vision he gave might yet become reality, which might not be in my lifetime, of course.
  • For guidance in the trusteeship of Action for Christ (formerly Mission for Christ) as we continue on the pathway of recovering from the deep crisis into which it was plunged by earlier mismanagement.  2016 will be an important year of decision for this organisation.
  • For wisdom in time management.  During 2016 I expect to lay down some responsibilities as I wish to focus on fewer things but do them better.  This includes being a better husband to Doreen and a better friend to others.
  • For yourself as I depend on you in the Lord.  We are partners in the mission of God.  Serving God is an enormous privilege and we cannot do it alone.

And coming up in January…
  • Regular ministry in Yelvertoft including facilitating a process of seeking God’s purposes for the church after my upcoming retirement.
  • Schools ministry never fails to bless me as I seek to share God’s truth in creative and effective ways.
  • My work in HMP Gartree and the men serving life sentences with whom I work.  We are still looking for another full time Christian chaplain on the team.
  • My work with the Salvation Army and elsewhere helping make churches safer places for the vulnerable and better carers both for victims and perpetrators.
  • The networking with rural church leaders and others engaged in rural mission, especially through the Rural Evangelism Network.  There is room for improvement in this area of ministry and aspects of service that depend upon this.


Yours in his service,

Barry