Who are you? (Part 1)

There must be little on earth as exciting as being part of a church that has a clear and shared understanding of why it exists and its part in God’s mission for the times in which it is living.  

It has been my privilege, during my many years of ministry, to be in such a church on three occasions.  The first was in an urban context, where I was part of a shared ministry and leadership team, and the others two occasions were in rural contexts, where I served as an ordained minister.  In all three churches I witnessed numerical and spiritual growth, and felt that I was on an exciting journey with God.  Sometimes we stumbled on that journey; at other times it felt as if we were running.

At the individual level, most Christians seem to have a sense that God has a particular purpose in calling us to become followers of Jesus Christ and part of his Church.  The apostle Paul’s teaching in 1Corinthians about the Body of Christ provides us with an excellent model for understanding what churches are, and what they are for.  Each person in the Church has a particular role that serves the whole.  Paul describes them as the various members of a body; some apparently more significant than others but actually, all are essential for the wellbeing of the whole.

What I have found exciting is what happens when we start to translate the purpose of God for individuals into what is God’s calling and purpose for a local church or congregation.  The individual parts of a body are not intended to be disparate and unrelated to the others but complementary, contributing to the nature and actions of their combined existence.  The failure to make that connection between the individual and the local church is one of the most disappointing characteristics of western Christianity today.  It is also, potentially, one of the exciting prospects, and not that difficult to discover.

Forty years ago, I set out on a journey to help rural churches become distinctively missional in ways that are particularly appropriate for each individual church within its own unique environment.  Along the way, the vision became clearer and the processes to achieve it became better understood.  One aspect of its embryonic development took place in the urban context.  I was part of a leadership team made up of three key members of an organisation that had been established to carry out rural evangelism in the UK.  

A struggling independent church in the town where the organisation was based believed that what was happening through the mission organisation in rural locations could also help them.  In responding to this call, the new shared leadership and ministry automatically brought a culture of mission.  The church quickly revived and, for many years, played a key part in the life of the town.  

Because the mission team was also committed to its work beyond the local church, and was frequently absent from it when engaged in outreach elsewhere, it was necessary for the other members of the church to take on much of the life and work in the town.  During this time, I was introduced to some church growth research which suggested that one Christian in ten had the gift of being an evangelist.  In order to explore this in our own church I took as the criterion for determining who had such a gift, a person who was always ready and comfortable sharing their testimony and the gospel story with other people.  We had more than ten percent.

Having identified the people who were the evangelists among the congregation, the  challenge was to help them to develop and find different ways of using their gift.  At the same time it raised the question, “So what are the other 90% supposed to do?” Some had already taken on pastoral and other ministries.  Sadly, the church never developed this into a structured concept, but the seed of a concept had been sown and was beginning to take shape.

A chance comment during an outreach, a question raised in a mini-conference on rural mission, and an opportunity to undertake a university course on management were to play their parts in developing the embryo into a fully formed and mature process.  But more of that another time.  There may be enough here to spark your own thinking about how your church might be shaped for mission.  What are the gifts and ministries, actual or still potential, discernable in your local church?  How might these then shape the missional role of your church within the local community?

Stay safe and stay blessed.
Barry
Rev Barry Osborne
CEO,Rural Mission Solutions
26th September 2020

The Father’s Love

This Sunday in the UK and many other countries, Father’s Day will be celebrated. For many it will be an opportunity to express appreciation for a good father, or an opportunity for some men to ponder that perhaps they didn’t do too bad a job.  Sadly for far too many it will not be a good day as their experience of a father was painful.  At times I have been aware of those who stayed away from church on Father's Day because of unhappy memories.

In my own life, Father's Day provides an opportunity for me to reflect on the love and support that our long-term foster son deserved, and still deserves as a middle aged man (we had no children of our own).  Could I have done better?  Wel, there is still a job to be done.  It also calls me to reflect on my own father, who came back from WW2 rather traumatised and finding it difficult to bond with my brother who had grown up without him, having been born just before my father was called up.

The impact of the war on my father’s health made him a rather angry man.  It was not until he experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, many years later, that he radically changed, and we developed a very special relationship.  His final words to me, as he lay dying in a hospital bed was, “Barry, commit me to the Lord.”  I took his hand and prayed with tears, giving thanks for all that God had done for him through his life, and praying for a deep sense of God’s presence and peace as he faced what were to be his last few hours.  He spoke once more, this time to my mother as he took her hand and told her all was well.

Most of us move into adult life realising how little we understood of all that our parents have done for us.  Being a parent brings joys but also many challenges.  Jesus understood this, as is evident in the parable of the prodigal son (or should that be the parable of the loving father?).

How hard it must have been for the father to accede to the younger son's persistent badgering to get his hands on that for which he considered he was entitled.  I suspect that, while he may have done some chores, he never really laboured with his father and older brother to grow the family’s wealth.  But he was ready to spend it on ‘having a good time’.  His father must have realised that it would be a terrible waste of hard earned money but, in accordance with the usual practise, one third of all that he had was turned into cash and he bade his sone farewell.

Clearly, he was not happy to see him go as Jesus informs us that the father saw his returning son even when he was some distance away,  I get the feeling that he searched that horizon every day.  But the alternative - forcing his son to stay home - would not have helped either of them.  Love is costly.  So it would have been in the heavens.  Have you ever stopped to think how the heavenly Father felt as he watched over his Son through 33 years of life on earth. How did he feel as his Son pleaded with him to take away that cup of suffering, knowing that he could not do so if we were to be saved.  While Jesus seems to have felt abandoned on the cross, I think that the hymn writer has got it wrong when he penned, “the Father turns his face away”.

And when the prodigal’s father saw his son coming home he ran to meet him. Words of regret and remorse were cut short by the father’s delight at his son’s return.  He called for shoes, a robe and a ring.  They were not a reward for coming back home; they were tokens of the father’s unconditional love. Doesn’t that make you want to weep and share in the hug that must have lasted a long time.

“This son of yours” was how the older son defined his brother.  Not much love there for the moment!  But there is no hint of anger at his elder son’s shortsightedness. Instead he reminds him that “all I have is yours”.  This father just keeps on giving.  This time giving words of loving assurance and gentle correction.

Our Online Bible Study on Tuesday evenings has been working through Ephesians.  Last week we came to chapter 3: 14-24.  Here, Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus to experience and engage with God’s love.  The language is extravagant, but he makes his request to a heavenly Father who has great riches of love and extraordinary generosity. Almost as a passing comment Paul states that to understand what family life is meant to be we need to understand the nature of the fatherhood of God. Now, that’s something to celebrate this Father’s Day.

Why not take 5 minutes to listen to this Graham Kendrick song.

Barry

Caring or Careless

No doubt, recent development regarding the Covid-19 pandemic will have left you wondering how long this will go on and whether you could find yourself under further restrictions in the coming weeks.  One of the aspects that has caused me concern is the attitude of some churches, which I find not that much different to that of the teenagers that have been walking around the streets in large boisterous groups.

Someone recently told me of a train journey where all the adults sat quietly wearing face masks to comply with the regulations, while a hoard of teenagers ran up and down the carriages without masks.  The wearing of face masks is both to protect the wearer from infection and also to protect others.  It is possible to have the virus without being aware of it and therefore becoming contagious.  Clearly there are some people who just do not care.

This blase attitude reminds me of the story of the man who fell from a very tall building and who, as he passed successive floors, was heard saying, “So far, so good!”  Covid-19 is highly contagious and its outcome can be fatal.  But the attitude common among teenagers is not very different from that shown by some churches.  Desperate to get back to ‘normal’ churches have been bending the rules and pushing the boundaries as if the virus has nothing to do with us.  There is a “What can we get away with” attitude that I find sad and scary.

When the Rule of Six was introduced I had presumed that would have included places of worship, but we were exempted.  However, it is all too easy to take advantage of this leniency as if it implied that we exist outside the other restrictions. The exemption is for the act of worship, but does not include illegal social gatherings inside or outside the building, before or after the service.  It is tempting to stay and socialise, but if we are more than 6 people in an individual group or the total number in the building  exceeds six, we are pushing the boundary.

‘Now the snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’  And we all know where that led!  Many years later, concern for individual welfare and the reputation of the church at Thessalonica,  led Paul to write urging them to steer clear of any kind of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22)  Now, as then, it is all too easy to flirt with what is contrary to holiness.

We are living in the midst of a pandemic, so the fact that I might be clear of infection (or at least think so) will not justify my being careless and uncaring of others.  Being careless not only puts me at risk, it puts others at risk and creates a care-free culture.  What if I infected a person, who infected another person, who infected a person who died from Covid-19?  The same is true when it comes to sin.  How we live morally puts others at risk.  If we care then let us be careful.

Why Bother to Change?

 Why bother to change?

Like it or not, change is something we all live with.  But sometimes we need to step back and ask the question, “Is it worth it?”.  This issue’s topic was triggered by three items of news in the past 24 hours, each featuring change issues.

The National Trust is currently undergoing some significant change, and there is more on the way.  The changes are largely driven by financial concerns as restrictions because of Covid-19 has had a major impact on the Trust’s income.  That sounds like a good reason to change, and one that many organisations are facing.  But National Trust is also re-thinking who they are, what they do and why they do that.  

In a recent press release Hilary McGrady, the Director General stated “in future, visitors will play a greater part in bringing the places we care for to life, adding: ‘Our nations’ beautiful places are not only for looking at, but for singing and dancing and reading, learning, cooking, crafting and creating in. And they belong to everyone.,”  Having seen the tragedy of change driven solely by financial reasons, I like the fresh thinking the National Trust is showing.  They may well be enhancing their core mission through the process of change.

The second news story is about ‘Question of Sport’, which has reached the age of 50 and recently celebrated this with a programme looking back over those years.  QS is the most popular TV quiz programme attracting a large audience and a queue of sports personalities who consider being on QS almost as great as winning gold in the Olympics!  Looking at the archives, it is clear that the programme has never changed some basic aspects, while it has made regular changes to keep the audience engaged.  One thing that has remained constant is the fun being enjoyed by the panelists and the studio audience.

My late wife and I have both been avid fans of QS despite knowing little about sport.  In fact, I can only remember being able to answer two questions over the years.  What has drawn us is seeing experts risk their reputations and still be able to laugh at themselves. It is about people having good clean fun. What QS has achieved is being able to hold onto the “Why” of what they do while making periodic changes to “How” they communicate the answer to that question.

The third news story is very different.  It is that young women in their twenties are paying large sums of money to have unnecessary elective beauty treatments such as facial botox injections.  Apparently, one of the factors driving this trend to change in how young women look, is the amount of time they are spending using Zoom on laptops.  Staring at their faces and those of their friends is causing them to see almost imperceptible signs of aging.  Desperate to stay looking young they are handing over thousands of pounds for treatment that might have only marginal benefits and carry risks.

While the Bible has little to say on the subject of this kind of change (other than the beauty treatment experienced by Esther), these stories have much to say about how we relate our faith to the world around us.  Looking in from the outside, who we are as ‘church’ and how we do church has often remained unchanged over decades.  Some will argue that this is a good thing.  But let’s ask that question again, “Why bother to change?”

Both the National Trust and Question of Sport are concerned about what their ‘customers’ get out of the experience of visiting or watching.  Both are concerned about enjoyment.  But there is nothing more enjoyable than a living relationship with God, whose unchanging nature means that he is always constantly relevant and wonderful to know.  Surely church should be about expressing that wonder and enjoyment.  Why then does it not look like that in many of our churches?  

If church looks and sounds old fashioned, dull and unattractive then our witness for Christ could do with some fresh thinking.  It is not ‘change for change sake’.  This is about change for the sake of Jesus Christ and the sake of those he longs to draw to himself.  We should not change our basic values, but we are not doing God any favours when in church we always do it the same old way that seems to have stopped being attractive around 100 years ago.

The parables of National Trust and Question of Sport are about change that enables the reason for their existence to remain contemporary, just as God remains unchanging yet always contemporary.  The parable of young women using botox is about the foolishness of trying to stop time and change from happening. God is in the business of change and what the world around us (family, friends and neighbours) should see is not an expression of our faith frozen in time as if by botox, but changing from one kind of glory into another that is more glorious (2 Corinthians 4:17,18).  

That is why we should bother.

Barry osborne 22/08/2020

Easier Simple Rules

Easier Simple Rules

I am writing this on Friday morning following the sudden announcement of new regulations for people in the northern parts of the UK.  As people are reeling from the lack of advance notice, and quickly changing their plans to comply with the new regulations, interviews with local people quite often express a wish that the rules could be made more simple.

While that would be desirable, the task of simplifying them is  itself complex.  In this current situation, the latest rule changes are designed both to keep people safe and to avoid a complete lockdown.  They have also been introduced because of apparent failures to comply with social distancing, though this may have been complicated by housing issues in some places.  Where I live it is impressive how most people in the small town respectfully step aside to allow others sufficient safe space.  At the same time, I still see groups of young people carelessly moving around in small mobs.  Would they behave differently, I wonder, if someone in their peer group was struggling to survive or had already lost the battle?

Interestingly, the Bible has something to say on the topic of keeping the rules simple.  In the times of Jesus on earth, the Pharisees had a reputation for creating complexity regarding the Law of Moses and how this was to be interpreted.  Matthew 22:37-40 and Luke 10:25-37 record similar incidents where Jesus was asked to provide clarity in understanding the Law.  On both occasions Jesus points to the simple summary, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind... and love your neighbour as yourself”

In the account in Luke, the answer Jesus provided to his question failed to satisfy the enquirer.  Clearly insufficient detail for a lawyer!  He sought greater clarification, which then led to possibly the best known of all the parables Jesus told.  We know it as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  In the story, two men who could have been expected to act with compassion towards a badly injured man, especially because of their familiarity with the law, passed by the injured man with no offer of help.  One even came for a closer look, but still passed by.

Then a man who might not have been expected to act with compassion, did so at considerable personal cost.  At last, the lawyer got the point.  We too are expected to get the point, but sometimes sermons develop the allegory beyond usefulness, and we can miss its fundamental purpose.  It is a simple story to illustrate the effectiveness of the shorthand version of the Law of Moses.

On the issue of loving your neighbours as you love yourself.  I wonder whether the rules for managing the Covid-19 virus could be simplified to respect the needs of others for protection as if you yourself were highly vulnerable and likely to die from this disease if you were to catch it.  I am sure that the majority of teenagers do not understand what it means to be “asymptomatic” and a risk to others.  If they did understand they would surely modify their careless behaviour.  What is clear is that alongside all the work of medical scientists, doctors and nurses, the ‘great British public’ could help enormously if we loved our neighbours as ourselves.  Now that’s a simple rule we should all be capable of understanding.

As is often the case, there is a punchline we need to note in Luke 10:37 “Go and do likewise”!

Items for praise and prayer

We are delighted to tell you that Lowenna, the five year old granddaughter of our Chairman, who a few weeks ago was in a life or death situation resulting from a bleed on her brain, is now making consistent progress.  She is more able to sit and stand unaided for short periods, tried to demonstrate ballet moves to the nurses, is managing some colouring, and there are signs of speech returning. Please keep all the family in your prayers.

We receive many encouraging comments from those who have been attending the online services and Bible studies we run each week.  Some who have been attending are now going back to their church buildings, or following more local online services.  We believe there remains a need, and plan to continue these.  Click here to go to our website where you will find details and links.  You are very welcome to join us and to invite others.

Rural Mission Solutions has a need to grow the core team.  This could be done either by someone exploring a call to Christian ministry or someone with experience but sufficient time to take on at least part time work.  This is so important that I considered suggesting periods of prayer with fasting.  We are looking for someone with a love for Jesus, a sense of a call from God, an interest in rural life, and possibly technical abilities.  Please feel free to pass this information to anyone you think might be interested.  Meanwhile please pray earnestly.

Please give thanks for those who have used the link at the foot of our Praise & Prayer News in order to help us to keep going.  

Please pray for wisdom as we seek to reshape our information and training webinars and videos to fit the new situation as we come out of lockdown.

Please stay safe and stay blessed.

The Power Of a Passing Thought

The Power of a Passing Thought
It’s Saturday morning, and I woke a full hour earlier than I intended and felt that I needed.  But already my head was buzzing with things that had to be done today.  Various jobs had been piling up through the week, and some, like writing Praise & Prayer News, seemed challenging.  Usually, I have a clear sense of what I would write by the middle of the week.  But not this week.  Then, as my mind was juggling with how to plan the day and get important tasks completed on time, two things happened almost simultaneously.

The first was reading the words that a ministry colleague had written as part of a series the Congregational Federation has been publishing entitled”A Secluded Place”.  Various authors contributed to the series, and some I had appreciated more than others.  I sat on the edge of the bed, and without much enthusiasm, scrolled through the short piece that Elaine had written about a worship song in Spanish that another colleague had brought back from one of her trips abroad.  I identified with her comments about the difficulty of learning worship songs in foreign languages and how often they fail to engage and inspire in the way intended.

Clearly Elaine and her husband had not allowed the difficulty to cause the simple song to be cast aside.  She wrote about how she sang the song “to herself” (or did she mean to God as a personal act of worship?).  She had included a YouTube link so, by then intrigued to hear the words in Spanish and English, I clicked the link.  As I listened to the long forgotten tune I found myself singing along in an act of quiet worship, sensing God’s presence, and realising that in a busy day not finding time to spend in worship is foolish.

What might have been no more than a passing thought (and I had certainly not expected to give it much time) had taken hold and claimed its rightful place front and centre. 

My other passing thought was a phrase in one of Paul’s letters to Timothy.  The second letter to Timothy is full of encouragement and exhortation to be faithful in his ministry as time when many had proved unfaithful, and some in Ephesus were actually opposing the gospel Paul had faithfully taught.  While there are some verses in this letter that have found universal application, there is much that seems so specific to Timothy that it only comes to our attention at times such as the induction of a new priest or minister.

Tucked among this list of important things that Timothy was to ‘get on and do’ are the words, “... do the work of an evangelist…”.  It is one of only three references to the ministry of an evangelist that we find in the New Testament.  To me, it seems like a passing thought, a “by the way” comment.  But perhaps among all the other duties and responsibility\s to be borne by the younger man (and also by us), care was needed not to forget something that was essential.

In busy times, when there is much that is needed to be done, some things are too important to be left as passing thoughts.  To press on working through our ‘to do’ list without making time first to be still and consciously spend time enjoying and worshipping God is both wrong and foolish.  Time so spent is an investment in our lives.  At the same time to allow all that we have to do today to squeeze out our responsibility to say something about our faith and who is at its centre, is to treat lightly all that Christ suffered for us and our salvation.  The story is not ours to keep it is God’s and he wants us to share it with others.

Just a thought… but don’t let it pass.

14 Miles of Woms

The Cost of Parenting
Yesterday I was given a generous slice of birthday cake.  It was Jud's second birthday and the air was filled with the noise of children and parents having fun next door.  Covid-19 restrictions having been eased, some relatives were able to come and join in the fun.  All kinds of items such as miniature tractors, footballs, goal posts, balloons, and much, much more were scattered over the lawn.  If I had hoped for a quiet afternoon, I was obviously going to be disappointed.

This got me wondering about just how much it costs to bring up a child - not in monetary terms, though that's pretty scary - but all that time and energy demanded of a parent.  The average cost of raising a child in the UK is calculated at £230,000 or around £12,000 per year.  Add to that all the sweat and tears and the cost of parenting is demanding.  The birds that frequent my garden face a similar challenge.  Each young robin requires around 14ft of earthworms during its nest life, and earth worms are not its main food.Parental responsibilities should not be taken lightly. Watching over children as they are growing up, caring for them through illness, helping them reach their potential, comforting them when they are sad.  The list goes on and on.

We have a heavenly Father, with an incredibly large family, who watches over each of his children every day, guarding them from harm, supplying their needs, listening to their prayers.  Each one is loved far more than they will ever know.  Many forget to say thank you, but he goes on loving and caring for them just the same. His fatherly love and care is not limited to twenty years; it lasts a lifetime. Aren't you thankful?

Blasts From The Past
I was fortunate to grow up in an age when Sunday Schools were the norm - though I did not think so at the time. The weekly afternoon hour of singing hymns, choruses and Bible teaching was supplemented by 30 minutes of a church service on Sunday mornings , and the annual terror of the National Sunday School Union exams.  Yes! We used to get examined to see how much we had learned.  The free church Sunday Schools in the town competed for a prize for the best results.  But, looking, back, I am grateful for the loving and faithful teachers who willingly gave their time for or benefit.  It was in this context that I learned about Jesus dying for my salvation, and came to love the Bible stories, and was inspired by visits from missionaries home on furlough, and the missionary story books that we were given as prizes.  I wonder now whether any of those teachers had hopes and dreams that what they were sowing would bring such a harvest in and through my life.

This Sunday I will be leading the Online Sunday Service (click the link above) and drawing on some of that early knowledge, presenting "An Unlikely Host" which is the latest in a series on God's unusual choices.  As I was preparing and thinking about appropriate hymns and songs I remembered a favourite from my Sunday School days.  I plan to use it and have searched the internet for a good recording that included all the verses.There are six verses in "It is a Thing Most Wonderful". Sadly, the verse most recordings omitted goes as follows:]

I sometimes think about the cross,
And shut my eyes and try to see
The cruel nails and crown of thorns,
And Jesus crucified for me

You see, that is precisely what I did.  And it is what I still do today, indeed did just now.  It is the vision that has inspired and driven my life for most of my 74 years.  But William Walsham How included another verse;

But even could I see him die,
I would but see a little part
Of that great love, which like a fire
Is always burning in his heart

How profound is that!  The love that caused Jesus to come into this world and enabled him to give his life as a sacrifice to set me free, that love - that sacrificial love - is what is constant in time and eternity. Every day "it is new every morning".  When I slip up and mess up, it's still that same wonderful ocean filling love. And it's for me! And it's for you!  Did I hear a "hallelujah"?  How,an evangelical Anglican priest and bishop includes the words "His love must be most wonderful, if he could die my love to win".

Any way, that's enough for me for now.  I have a service to prepare and I want all that good stuff that my Sunday School teachers patiently pored into me, and all the wonderful words from Walsham How, to overflow in blessing those who connect to the internet from their homes to morrow at 9.00.  I had better get on preparing.

Thank you for taking time to read.  Thank you for your prayers, and your love and partnership as we seek to spread the good news to others within the 10,000,000 people who live in rural UK.

Stay safe, and stay blessed,

Rev Barry Osborne
CEO,Rural Mission Solutions
411h July 2020   

Because you praed! Discover the power of your prayers

Because You Prayed

Prayer is not just a privilege, it is extremely powerful.  One of my favourite passages of scripture is Acts chapter 12 verse 5 where we read “So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.”  Herod was determined to stamp out Christianity, as the followers of Jesus became known.  He had already had James, the brother of John, killed.  Discovering that this was a popular political move, he had targeted Peter, who was probably seen as the leader of this new religious movement.

Peter was arrested, put into jail behind two locked doors, soldiers chained to his right and left sides, and two more soldiers on guard at the gates.  To avoid the soldiers becoming weary and careless, they were changed every six hours.  The writer of the Acts of the Apostles clearly wants us to understand that this is an impossible situation.  Within a few hours, Peter would certainly be killed. BUT...  (How I love this verse).  It neatly falls into two halves.  The first half declares the impossibility of the situation.  The second half explains that all things are possible when we pray. Peter was miraculously delivered out of this impossible situation and the writer wants us to know what made that happen.

Quite frequently, I hear older and sometimes infirm Christians declare that they “can only pray”, as if this is a tiny contribution to the ministry.  Pastors, evangelists, and pioneer missionaries all bear witness to the value of having faithful prayer warriors.  The apostle Paul, amongst these, specifically urges people to pray for him in at least six of his letters. No wonder that we do the same today.

Because you have prayed we have seen difficulties rolled out of the way, problems resolved, people brought to a saving knowledge of Jesus, Christians motivated to share the gospel, and so much more.  Because you prayed.

Back in 2013 I was asked if I would come to the aid of the mission in which I had spent the first 25 years of my ministry.  Having been blighted by illegal acts of two successive trustees, what was once a significant force in rural evangelism had become largely denuded.  There were no longer any staff evangelists, its support base drastically reduced, and its financial assets almost fully spent.  Linked with this was the trusteeship of a house and land which had been left to the Mission in 1979 but which remained occupied by the daughter of the former governing body member whose Will provided the legacy. Thirty four years on, what was intended as an asset had become a significant liability.

A few weeks ago I felt it was important to ask you to pray for a resolution to this dilemma.  The house and land were badly neglected because the trustees of the Will were left no funds to manage the estate.  The first request for prayer, a few years ago led to a request from two neighbours who wished to purchase small plots of land to extend their gardens.  That enabled accumulated debts to be paid off, leaving a tiny balance at the bank.  Then, as prayer continued, the opportunity to sell the property and invest the funds seemed possible.  But the plan was thwarted by opposition from the daughter, even after she had to go into full time care.

More prayer was requested.  Last October, the Court brought the opposition to an end and this week the property was finally sold, lifting a heavy burden from the shoulders of a fellow trustee and me.  It was sold for more than we had imagined, because of the neglected state of the house and land.  Someone saw its potential.  The funds from the sale remain in a private trust for now but at some time in the future (currently unknown) they will provide a useful asset that will bring fresh life to what is currently inactive.

Because you prayed.

A few weeks ago, we brought the news that the five year old granddaughter of our Chair of Trustees in Rural Mission Solutions had suffered a stroke and had been airlifted from Cornwall to a Bristol Hospital.  Her condition at that time seemed hopeless, BUT prayer was made for her recovery.  I suggested setting up a prayer network using WhatsApp, an communication application available to modern mobile phones.  As the news went out, friends around the country also shared it through their own churches and friends, just as we also shared the situation with you.  Since that day, scores of people have been praying for Lowenna through every day.

WhatsApp has served to keep us informed, and we have been excited to learn that against the odds, Lowenna has made amazing progress.  She is not yet “out of the woods” but various parts of her body are waking up so that she has some movement and can breathe unaided for much of each day.  The target now is to see her able to take food through her mouth in the normal way.  Doctors are amazed, family members have been encouraged, and I have shed a few tears of joy along the way.  Because you prayed.

When we pray impossibilities turn into practical experience.  So, here are this week’s prayer requests.

Firstly, let us give thanks for all God’s blessing and the many answers to prayer we all experience.  Give thanks for the two answers to prayer described above.

Please keep praying for little Lowenna.  Don’t give up.  Pray for her two younger sisters still in Cornwall with grandparents.  Pray for Dan and Tracy as they try to balance being in Bristol to support Lowenna and in Cornwall for the other two children.  The physical, mental, emotional and spiritual stress on them has been enormous.  Pray that they will experience a deep sense of God’s presence and help.  Pray also for Gordon and Jane Banks, our partners in Rural Mission Solutions.

Pray for Elizabeth and me, as trustees of the Will, as we seek to look after the funds from the house sale.  It may be several years before any of this money will be available for the Lord’s work, so we have to invest it wisely.

Give thanks for blessings on our ministry over recent weeks. Our regular online ministry is being well received and we continue to receive messages about how the talks and songs have touched those who watch and listen.  We plan to continue the early Sunday Morning  Services for the immediate future.  Pray for guidance as we plan these.  Pray that God will bless his word to the hearts of the online congregation.  Give thanks too for the effective teaching ministry on safeguarding given to Salvation Army cadets this week.

Pray that we will find the people God is wanting to work with us for the continuance of our ministry.  This may be people coming into Christian ministry who can develop understanding and skills in the form of an ‘apprenticeship’.  But God may have other plans. This is an urgent matter.  It seems impossible But…..

Please keep praying that our support base (both in prayer and finance) will grow.  We are thankful for donations and one new regular supporter through the work of Stewardship.  See the link at the end of this e-letter.  Rural Mission Solutions benefits from the relatively cost-free ministry of those of us currently working in the organisation.  But if we engage younger people in this ministry costs will rise beyond our current means.  As you give thanks for answers to prayer, please pray that God will continue to meet our needs as we step out in faith to engage others in this ministry.

Every day I find myself challenged by the millions of men, women and young people who live in the rural areas of the UK.  Most do not even know about the cross and God’s saving power.  We need thousands of existing rural churches to become appropriately missional, living out God’s call to share in his mission.  Please pray for all aspects of our online ministry both now in the current circumstances and as we move out of lockdown.

Miracles will happen…. Because you prayed.

Thank you.  Keep safe and keep blessed,

Barry

The father's Love

The Father’s Love

This Sunday in the UK and many other countries, Father’s Day will be celebrated. For many it will be an opportunity to express appreciation for a good father, or an opportunity for some men to ponder that perhaps they didn’t do too bad a job.  Sadly for far too many it will not be a good day as their experience of a father was painful.  At times I have been aware of those who stayed away from church on Father's Day because of unhappy memories.

In my own life, Father's Day provides an opportunity for me to reflect on the love and support that our long-term foster son deserved, and still deserves as a middle aged man (we had no children of our own).  Could I have done better?  Wel, there is still a job to be done.  It also calls me to reflect on my own father, who came back from WW2 rather traumatised and finding it difficult to bond with my brother who had grown up without him, having been born just before my father was called up.

The impact of the war on my father’s health made him a rather angry man.  It was not until he experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, many years later, that he radically changed, and we developed a very special relationship.  His final words to me, as he lay dying in a hospital bed was, “Barry, commit me to the Lord.”  I took his hand and prayed with tears, giving thanks for all that God had done for him through his life, and praying for a deep sense of God’s presence and peace as he faced what were to be his last few hours.  He spoke once more, this time to my mother as he took her hand and told her all was well.

Most of us move into adult life realising how little we understood of all that our parents have done for us.  Being a parent brings joys but also many challenges.  Jesus understood this, as is evident in the parable of the prodigal son (or should that be the parable of the loving father?).

How hard it must have been for the father to accede to the younger son's persistent badgering to get his hands on that for which he considered he was entitled.  I suspect that, while he may have done some chores, he never really laboured with his father and older brother to grow the family’s wealth.  But he was ready to spend it on ‘having a good time’.  His father must have realised that it would be a terrible waste of hard earned money but, in accordance with the usual practise, one third of all that he had was turned into cash and he bade his sone farewell.

Clearly, he was not happy to see him go as Jesus informs us that the father saw his returning son even when he was some distance away,  I get the feeling that he searched that horizon every day.  But the alternative - forcing his son to stay home - would not have helped either of them.  Love is costly.  So it would have been in the heavens.  Have you ever stopped to think how the heavenly Father felt as he watched over his Son through 33 years of life on earth. How did he feel as his Son pleaded with him to take away that cup of suffering, knowing that he could not do so if we were to be saved.  While Jesus seems to have felt abandoned on the cross, I think that the hymn writer has got it wrong when he penned, “the Father turns his face away”.

And when the prodigal’s father saw his son coming home he ran to meet him. Words of regret and remorse were cut short by the father’s delight at his son’s return.  He called for shoes, a robe and a ring.  They were not a reward for coming back home; they were tokens of the father’s unconditional love. Doesn’t that make you want to weep and share in the hug that must have lasted a long time.

“This son of yours” was how the older son defined his brother.  Not much love there for the moment!  But there is no hint of anger at his elder son’s shortsightedness. Instead he reminds him that “all I have is yours”.  This father just keeps on giving.  This time giving words of loving assurance and gentle correction.

Our Online Bible Study on Tuesday evenings has been working through Ephesians.  Last week we came to chapter 3: 14-24.  Here, Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus to experience and engage with God’s love.  The language is extravagant, but he makes his request to a heavenly Father who has great riches of love and extraordinary generosity. Almost as a passing comment Paul states that to understand what family life is meant to be we need to understand the nature of the fatherhood of God. Now, that’s something to celebrate this Father’s Day.

Why not take 5 minutes to listen to this Graham Kendrick song.

Barry - 21 June 2020

Overwhelmed by Love

Overwhelmed By Love

Over recent weeks, and in various places, I have shared something of my experience of encountering the love of God, and the way that has changed my life.  These have been truly overwhelming experiences.  Sadly, the word ‘love’ is often devalued both by the over-sentimental use of the term and its use when ‘enjoy’ would be more appropriate.  For example, I enjoy chocolate very much.

My first encounter with the love of God took place on hastings Pier on the Saturday before Easter Sunday in 1963 where I attended a meeting where Sylvia Smith, a TES evangelist was speaking about the forgiveness Jesus showed from the cross.  I went into that meeting with a head knowledge of what the cross was about, and left with my first overwhelming sense of God’s love for me.  It was a real experience.  I felt that love.

My second encounter took place about 14 months later in a little AOG church where I was present as a visiting mission team member.  I had thought myself to be a truly dedicated Chrisrian and almost the epitome of Christian love.  I had thought that the person preaching that evening was preaching at me about an experience of the Holy Spirit I had not received, though I had sought it passionately for over a year.  While the preacher was an excellent evangelist, some aspects of his character were very unattractive.  So while I should have been listening, I rehearsed before God my colleagues hypocrisies and failings.

Suddenly I felt the Holy Spirit leave me, though I would have had difficulty in describing how I felt his presence before that moment.  I immediately knew the Spirit was grieved by my judgmental attitude (the very thing in my list of accusations against my colleague).  As I asked God to take away my bitterness and baptise me in his love, I received a powerful sensational experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit.  While I remained aware of my colleague’s failings, I found a very real sense of brotherly love towards him.  It was not a love inherent of myself; it was God’s love the Spirit had poured into my heart. (See Romans 5:5)

An overwhelming love for God

But wonderful as past experiences are, I continue to find myself feeling overwhelmed by this love.  I remain amazed at the love of God towards me.  First and foremost, the plan and price of my salvation.  I will probably never fully understand all that Jesus endured on the cross, and the emotional rollercoaster he went on through that time. But the love of God has for me, with all my failings also amazes me.  Despite my disappointing him he keeps loving me and proving that love with daily blessings.  I know that he loves me as I am, but too much to let me stay that way.  For all of that I love God.

Love of my friends and family

Doreen and I never had children, but we had the joy of fostering teenagers, all now middle aged.  Michael, who lived with us until he was 20, warmed my heart with his Father’s Day card and phone call in the past week. Regular phone calls and messages from my sister and brother, nephews and nieces, plus my sisters-inlaw make me aware of the treasure of love I have around me.  Added to this God has given me good neighbours and many good friends.  But all these are not here so that I feel loved.  They are here for me to love and seek to share with them God’s love

Love of myself

I have to say that I find some subjective comments about loving oneself hard to understand.  I am aware that I have failed many times and in many ways.  There are plenty of ‘if onlys’  but knowing how much I am loved by God despite my failings, enables me to accept and love myself.  I am his child, a co-heir with the Son.  I could not be valued more, and I revel in that knowledge.  I am not always loveable but I love the me that Jesus loves.

Love for the unlovely

There is a line in the hymn, “My song is Love unknown” that goes “Love for the loveless shown that they might lovely be.” There are many unlovely people in this world doing unlovely acts.  Sometimes people have done or said unlovely things to me.  But instead of feeling anger, God has enabled me to feel love.  That’s not normal and it never excuses bad behaviour, but I cannot deny the extraordinary love.  Do I sometimes feel hurt?  Yes, but there is always that response of love.  My late wife’s sad experience of Alzheimer’s Disease robbed her and me of the personality with whom I fell in love.  So, I asked the Lord to help me love the new person with whom I was living.  He did, and every day brought fresh challenges, but with them those overwhelming experiences of deep love.  Wonderfully, Doreen changed again at the end and showed very real love and affection to me and to her carers.

Love for this present world

I regret that early influences in my Christian life tended to present this world as a bad place, not to be loved. But, of course the “world” we are discouraged from is described as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” (1 John 2: 15-17)  This is not the created world, but the sinful realm.  When I was a young boy we used to sing a hymn in Sunday School that starts with the words, “The world looks very beautiful. and full of joy to me; The sun shines out in splendour on everything I see”  (Words : https://hymnary.org/text/the_world_looks_very_beautiful 

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuC-FINREgc)

The beauty of the created world is a real joy.  But I also love the beautiful aspects human beings bring to it.  Beautiful social interactions in real life or portrayed on the screen and in books, beautiful music, beautiful art - are all enjoyed and accompanied with laughter and tears of joy.

Love of scripture

I never tire from reading and exploring scripture.  Recent online Bible studies in Philippians and Ephesians has been like drinking fresh water from a pure stream.  There are vital truths tucked into the nuances in Paul’s letters that are fabulous.  I finish our online Bible studies excited and reinvigorated.  I just love God’s word - it is such an amazing book.  Furthermore, though written long ago, it speaks into my life every day..

These are just some of the aspects of the love that overwhelms me on a day by day basis. Paul writes about God’s love in a prayer in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus.  He prays that they might be able to grasp the immensity of this love, to know it experientially, and be filled with all the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3: 14-21)

I hope that my reflections on this overwhelming love for God and all he brings into my life, will deepen your own love for God and the beautiful things he brings into your life.  Why not take a moment to ponder this amazing love and revel in it.  I find it has a wonderful way of eclipsing those temporary experiences of physical pain and disappointments.

Stay safe and stay blessed.

Barry - 25 June 2020