The 'Big Society'

This week I sat in on our Partnership in Mission Committee as the issue of our Communion Offerings was discussed. It’s this committee’s responsibility to nominate the various charities we support on a monthly basis – and this forms an important part of our church’s ‘Mission Giving’.  I found it fascinating to look at the briefing papers and see the various organisations we’ve given to in recent years.  These are often small charities supported by our members and recommended by them.  On average we give to both the ‘parent’ denominations of our church, Christian Aid, eleven organisations through the Communion Offering and to three further charities through our Christmas Offerings.  All of that added up, last year, to just under £20,000 worth of support.

I want to suggest that this represents exemplary commitment by our congregation that flies in the face of what they call ‘compassion fatigue’.

In my experience churches are full of people whose faith and conviction makes them into communities of consistent generosity.
A few years ago I was at a Ministers’ Meeting addressed by our local MP who also happened to be a cabinet minister.  He arrived late having been detained at 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister.  A little group of them had been called together following the announcement that the government believed in ‘The Big Society’.  This small cabinet group was being asked: what could the ‘Big Society’ look like?  It was a somewhat astonishing insight into the process of government policy: announce it first and work out what it really means afterwards!

Well our Ministers’ Meeting was in no such doubt as to what a ‘Big Society’ looks like – and we told the cabinet minister that we all stood in front of one every week!  For we stand before groups of worshippers who volunteer in both church and society, who have deep pockets of generosity and who embrace new projects with remarkable enthusiasm considering the routine commitments they already regularly maintain.  And part of this is represented by all those Communion Offerings we were discussing on Tuesday morning – as well as the 193 jobs/tasks that need doing in our church and are not only listed in our current directory but actually have names of people beside every one – volunteers who regularly step up to the mark.

‘Community’ is, I believe, a central theme in Christianity – and when it comes to the idea of the ‘Big Society’ I’m thrilled to say that in my experience churches really do ‘practice what they preach’!

Better Together

After Christmas and Epiphany, just as we start allowing ourselves to get a touch excited about longer days, we bump into the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  It started today, 18^th January and runs through until the 25^th of this month.

To celebrate this Week of Prayer we’re holding a united service between the three town centre churches of Amersham on the Hill this coming Sunday at St John’s Methodist Church.

I was interested to learn that Amersham Free Church, set up as intentionally ecumenical with the Baptist and Congregational Unions as its original parent bodies, came into being in 1907 closely followed by The Week of Prayer that was first held in January 1908.

I’ve always valued, and usually enjoyed, ecumenical involvement.

One of my first experiences came during my ordination training.  I was invited to be the Evensong preacher at a rather grand parish church.  The Rector and I met up thirty minutes before the service to walk me through the logistics.  I admit I was nervous as taking part in processions isn’t something we Baptists do very often.  ‘You sit there’ – he said, pointing to a chair one side of the altar.

Well, I processed in behind the choir, but when I got to the chancel the chair, previously pointed out to me, had been removed!  What was I to do and where was I to sit?

To my embarrassment my next move wasn’t the smartest in my life.  In full view of giggling choir boys, I tried moving a seat the other side of the altar to the place originally pointed out to me.

I got halfway across, from one side of the altar to the other, when I realised I could go no further because this rather grand looking chair (more like a throne really) was actually chained and could go no further.  By now I was resembling Frank Spencer in ‘Some Mothers do have’em’!  So, I retreated back to the chair’s original position and there with my head down until called upon to preach.

The Rector was very understanding afterwards – apologized that someone had removed the original chair and commented, with a glint in his eye, that the one I actually sat on was usually reserved for the bishop!

Since then my ecumenical encounters have been rather tame by comparison.

There are, I believe, lots of advantages in serving alongside other Christians and some of our best work is done when we do it together. 

On Tuesday at AFC we had a great talk about Bible Society which is supported, just like Christian Aid, by all the mainline churches in Britain. And locally we have a great project called ‘Open the Book’ which works in schools taking assemblies in a fun way – and is ‘staffed’ by volunteers from a variety of Amersham churches.

So, I’m looking forward to Sunday because I believe in ecumenism – but I will be careful as to which chair I sit in!

Hauke's Prayer

Hauke, from Germany, is our Time for God volunteer and is serving at Amersham Free Church for this academic year.  We’ve loved getting to know him over recent months and most weeks he takes part in Morning Service, anything from leading the Opening Responses and setting up the Data Projector to playing the piano during the offering.  Last week he did something different – he wrote the opening prayer of adoration and confession – something he’d never done before and in English too! 

His prayer comes across with a certain freshness and deep sincerity – so I thought it would be great to have it on the Blog this week!

Prayer of Adoration
Before you, O God, we are able to calm down.  We don’t have to say great words.  We can just be the person we are.
Before you, O God, we are able to come to rest.  We don’t have to walk around desperately looking for answers.
Before you, O God, we can gather our thoughts and find our way through your guidance.
God, we thank you for filling us with peace and love.

Prayer of Confession
God, you know us and our sins, our way of life and our objectives.
In our daily life we are often only thinking about our own goals and wishes, and tend to forget our surroundings.
Please help us to see the needs of others around us and give us strength to help them.

Christmas Clearance

Popped into Tesco over the weekend and almost the first shelf I bumped into was labelled ‘Christmas Clearance’.

Items, highly prized and priced just days ago, were now on offer at knock down prices!  Somehow the crackers and chocolate Santas loose their sparkle remarkably quickly after the 25^th.

Then on New Year’s Day, in search of milk, I breeze into Waitrose and find a whole shelf of Easter Bunnies!  All felt a bit like ‘indecent haste’!

In 1973, as a twelve-year-old, the band Wizzard had a hit entitled ‘I wish it could be Christmas everyday’ – now that’s not a sentiment I readily ascribe to, yet I fully understand frustration of the Narnian creatures in C.S.Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe who bemoan the fact that, under the rule of the white witch, it was ‘always winter yet never Christmas’.

So, is Christmas date sensitive?  Does it have a ‘best before’ stamp?!

I think one of the deepest ideas Christians celebrate in this Feast of Christ’s Birth is that of the transformative Presence of God – that ‘alongsideness’ which is encapsulated in the name Immanuel -God is with us.

This week folk will have returned to work, getting back into routine, having operations, facing challenges-  and God is with us as much now, at the beginning of 2018 as when we sang Silent Night in church on Christmas Eve.

We may soon be boxing up the decorations and recycling the cards, yet the essence of Christmas – that presence of love and light is surely to be welcomed and cherished every day of the year.

The Innkeeper's Tale: A Story for Christmas

It’s been quite a night here in King David Street.

Bethlehem isn’t a big place.  We are really a dormitory town to Jerusalem.  Yet this year the month of Nisan has been bedlam.

You see the Romans (if they hadn’t got better things to do) ordered a census and everyone has had to go back to their home town to register.

Esther and I are fine.  We were born here and have been running this Inn all our married life.  And to be truthful this census has been great for business.

But the last few days have actually run us into the ground.  Every rooms been taken, but often only for the one night.  You should see the washing – it’s never ending. 

Still, when it’s all over I’ve promised Esther I’ll take her for a long weekend to the seaside at Joppa, one of our favourite places.

But I still can’t get my head round last night.  It was early evening when this young couple tried booking in.  They looked utterly exhausted and I could see she was near her time.  I’d have loved to have been more accommodating but we’ve only got four rooms to let and everyone had paid up front and gone for an early afternoon check in.

I was just about to turn this young couple away – of course I’d recommend some other place to them, when Esther came back from shopping and told me she’d heard every room in town had been booked out by mid-afternoon.

Now, Esther’s what you call the mothering kind.  Our kids are grown up now but she acts as the local midwife and everyone loves Esther. 

So, of course, she twisted my arm and we let this young couple have the storage room just above the stable.  It’s warm but we’ve never let it out before and I’ve no idea what would be its going rate! 

Esther made them comfortable.  But then Joseph (that was his name – he had a Bethlehem accent of course, but he said all his relatives had moved away from town years ago just after he took a job up north, place called Nazareth – I’ve never heard of it!), banged on the inn door around midnight.  Poor guy, he was in such a state, he looked terrified.

Esther took charge for the rest of the night.  I went over once and called up to the room above the stable to asked if she needed extra oil lamps, but she said no, the stable seemed unusually bright and sure enough as I looked up into the night sky the stars seemed to me to be brighter than I’d ever seen them before.

By about 5am as dawn was breaking I heard a baby’s cry and took over some bread, olives and pomegranate juice.  Joseph came down and had a bite to eat alongside the tethered donkeys and the few sheep, goats and hens we keep there.

His eyes were watery and he couldn’t stop smiling.

I said I needed to get back to the main house but he insisted I go up and see Mary.  But by now she was actually asleep.  Esther was holding the baby and Joseph told me he was to be called Yesuha – that’s a variant for us of the name Joshua, meaning deliverer.  It’s a good name, some of my own family have it too.

This all seemed so ordinary and yet a bit different.  That starlight and then as the sun started to rise a group of shepherd friends of mine, Ben, Samuel and Jacob turn up.  They regularly drink here and said they had been told about the birth of Yesuha.  I asked how they knew and they just grinned at me in a slightly gormless way and said – ‘we just know’ and then winked at each other.

Now Ben, Sam and Jake are just regular shepherd mates of mine so I was amazed that these three guys go up to the stable loft as quiet as Synagogue mice and spend ten minutes admiring Yesuha and congratulating this young couple – a conversation that seemed to go so deep even though they had just met – it’s as if my three mates and Mary and Joseph had known each other for years and something, some hope, some truth maybe bound them together.

As these three guys came down from there I saw them in a different light.  After a long night shift on the hills they left our stable as if they were walking on air!

By mid-morning it had all quietened down.

The three in the stable loft were asleep, as was Esther up in our room.

I started to open up for the lunchtime regulars and found myself inexplicably thrilled about all that had gone on the night before.  As if I had been part of a story that was important.

Think of that, Esther and I, just making a living with our little Inn on the corner of King David Street – part of someone’s bigger story.

Seemed important.

Seemed special.

Seemed like something worth celebrating.

Oh well, need to get back to work.  I wonder what I should charge them for the stable loft?  Perhaps I’ll give it to them as a present – never know it might start a tradition!

A Christmas Thanksgiving

It’s almost here, and on the train to London today to visit a friend, I wrote this prayer for our midnight service on Christmas Eve:

On this holy night
we delight once more in
the song of the angels
the worship of the shepherds
and the adoration of the magi.

On this holy night
we rejoice
that light has pierced the darkness
hope has tempered our despair
and joy has touched our sorrow.

On this holy night
we give thanks and praise
that Love came down and
The Word became flesh.

So, on this most holy night
accept, we pray, our Christmas thanksgiving
for the gift of your Beloved Son
The Christ-child of Bethlehem
God, come among us.
Amen

O Magnum Mysterium - and no, it's not an ice-cream!

An old hymn we sometimes sing in church has the line, ‘tis mystery all…’  I wonder if that really describes faith?

For me, much of Christianity has a sense of cohesion which I find inspiring.  I think it makes sense to have a faith in which ‘love’ is central, a love that moulds and sustains us.  It’s almost creedal to say that love is at the centre of:
                              every relationship
                              every community
                              every positive act
                                                            and surely one of the most foundational statements we have in our scriptures is the verse that proclaims with a simplicity that disguises its profundity: ‘God is love’.

And yet I would also want to willingly acknowledge and embrace that ‘mystery’ can both deepen our faith and free us from the need to have a full sheet of water tight answers to all those questions we’ve been asking since we were six.

Don’t get me wrong.  At AFC we are quite a ‘questioning’ church.  We like digging deep in our attempt to make an honest critique of life and faith.

Yet when it comes to Christmas I’ll happily settle for mystery.

The idea that God shared our life in Jesus, born at Bethlehem is as mind-blowing as it is inspirational.

At the centre of Christianity is an idea beyond explanation: that God comes alongside us.  Not a far away God, but one closer than our breathing.

Our Jewish cousins have a word for it: ‘Immanuel’ – meaning ‘God with us’.

That love of God is found in the new life of a baby, the faithful care of parents and the intuitive worship of the shepherds.

God comes close.

If Easter is the Christian festival of life, then Christmas is surely our festival of love.

One of the simplest carols puts it this way: ‘Love came down at Christmas…’

Over these coming days as Advent erupts into the joy of Christmas may God come close to you.  Maybe in the smile of a child, the flicker of a candle or even in the struggles that simply don’t go away.  Struggles which we can bear because of the love and support that surrounds us.

A verse from the Latin Mass for Christmas Day begins: ‘O Magnum Mysterium’ – ‘O Great Mystery’.

There is an implicit mystery to Christmas as there is to Love.  Yet all our lives are the better for it.

Better for the mystery which unfolded that night in Bethlehem when ’Love came down...'.