All Aboard!

Can you build a boat with people?  That’s what we tried to do this morning.  We made a human ‘sculpt’ of a boat and thought about the story of Noah.  Here is our boat:

People as boat
Our boat!
Cake
Gill cuts the cake to mark her first service

 

 A podcast of the service is available for download.

 

 

Welcome Gill!

We are happy to be able to celebrate today.  This is the start of a new chapter for THBC as we held the induction service for Gill Isterling today.  It is also a new chapter for Gill, as she starts ministry in her first church.  But thinking bigger, both of us (Gill and THBC) are really part of God’s bigger story – God’s story where his fierce love reaches out into our lives.

Many people contributed to the service including Mike Frgaredo – the Baptist Union regional minister, Anne Davies from Gill’s previous church in Mansfield, a ‘dissenting’ sermon from Richard Kidd, a number of individuals from the church representing the whole church through spoken word and prayer, and also there was music and worship from TH members including Rosie and Jago.

Music Group Singing
Music Group Singing

Of course no celebration is complete without a some kind of food and we certainly had a plenty of great food to enjoy.  Thanks to everybody who worked to provide this, to set it up and to clear it all up afterwards.

Food in the hall
Food in the hall

Mike reminded us of the similarities between a wedding and an induction. The induction has been well and truly celebrated. But the covenant relationship we (THBC) and Gill have entered is just beginning and this really is just the start!

 
 A podcast of the service is available for download.

 

What is the point of church meetings?

 

Let me quickly say I do not think church meetings are pointless! But I do wonder sometimes what God makes of our church meetings at THBC. Are there some things we should be talking about that aren’t on the agenda? Are there some things we should not be talking about? I remember a church meeting (which was before I was at THBC, so I think I am safe to say this) where we literally spent quarter of an hour talking about what colour paper we should use to print the leaflets on – is that right?church-meetings
The Baptist Union of Great Britain talks about Church Meetings being one of the nine things that makes up common Baptist belief:

In a Baptist church, an illustration of the priesthood of all believers is the church meeting. This is the occasion when members come together to prayerfully discern God’s will for their life together. In Baptist churches the final authority rests not with the ministers or deacons but with the members gathered together in church meetings.

Is this what our church meetings feel like?

Church meetings can:

• Allow God to speak clearly and powerfully through our gatherings together.
• Be agonising occasions at times
• Give the opportunity to listen for the voice of the Spirit
• Seem to go on for ages
• Allow all to participate in the life of the church

Here’s a question – do we need change our church meetings so that they truly give us the opportunity to listen to God? To talk about what is truly important?

What should church meetings look like, now, for us at THBC? More structure? Less structure? Fine as they are?

The good news is that we can decide what we want our church meetings to be like. And the even better news is that we have a congregational meeting to discuss just this subject on 12th June – Mike Fegredo will be leading us.

So, whatever your present experience of church meetings, please do come along and help shape what future church meetings will be like. If you are unable to make the meeting itself, please do share your thought with the deacons.

-Gus Rochester

 

Just another pressure?

InBrian McLaren our house group this week we were talking about the connectedness of body and soul and as part of this we watched a video clip of Brian McLaren.  He talks about  how our body and soul and our ability to pray and read the Bible can be connected to how we feel.  If you are feeling like God has become just another pressure, it might be worth a quick watch.

-Gus

Advent: 24th December

Did you know that in Mexico they have a ritual in the final 9 days leading up to Christmas? It is called the Posadas, which means ‘shelter’ or ‘lodging’ and takes place from Dec 16th – Dec 24th. It re-enacts Joseph and Mary’s search for somewhere to stay in Bethlehem: each night a couple will call at someone’s house and be turned away by an ‘innkeeper’; and on Christmas eve they are finally welcomed into the last house where they celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Over this Advent I have been thinking a lot about Mary. I can’t help thinking she must have been very disappointed in God at times. Having been told she was going to be mother to the ‘Son of the Most High’ by an angel, I wonder if she thought she had dreamt it or imagined it as she made the long uncomfortable journey to Bethlehem in the late stages of her pregnancy at the whim of an emperor. And then finally to arrive to find that there was nowhere she could have some shelter, some privacy, some dignity as her labour started to commence, except a cattle shed. I think I would have felt pretty angry with God if had been me.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into the story from a 21st century perspective; all we can do is speculate what Mary thought or felt as we know so little from the few words about her in the Bible. Mary traditionally has been presented as such an ethereal, calm, placid woman over the ages but I like to think she had some pretty frank discussions with God as she prayed, trying to make sense of it all. Maybe that is what is meant by Luke 2:19 ‘But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.’ – I imagine Mary telling the story to Luke and discussing how at times things made no sense, and how there would then be incidents of surprising holiness and affirmation.

How do you deal with your disappointment or anger with God when you don’t understand what he is doing in your life, in your work, in your family, in your church, in your neighbourhood, with your friends? In this time of waiting, perhaps we can be real about those feelings and acknowledge that we don’t always understand how God works. And perhaps we can look at the Christmas story as an example of how God was working to draw everyone to himself, even if it made no sense to Mary at times.

Pictures and music can speak far more than words – take a look at this 4 minute video about Mary: CeeLo Green – Mary Did You Know

This is our last Advent post, and Gus & I wish you all a very Happy Christmas. Please do give us your comments about how you think this experiment of using internet posts has been for you. We would be very interested to hear your opinions, particularly whether you feel it has been useful for you; and whether it is worth doing this kind of thing again. With love, Vidge x

Advent: 20th December

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

-Isaiah 9

The story of the Bible starts with creation, and everything being ‘good’. Pretty soon though, things go wrong and time after time, people seem to choose a path that takes them further away from God. People choose to go there own way, and make idols for themselves. At this point in the story there seems to an absence of God – a darkness. And it is of course still true. You don’t have to look very far to see the darkness in our world right now. Greed, war, injustice, poverty – all too present around us.

And Breaking into this darkness – in the way that only a light can – after a long time of waiting, God comes. And isn’t that what we are doing this advent? Waiting for God to break into the darkness in our world. Longing for him to break into our hearts and the hearts of those around us. I love how it is written in The Message in John 1, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.”

I leave you with this prayer from the Northumbria Community. It titled as an evening prayer for blessing during Advent, but perhaps it is also for anybody who is waiting. Love, Gus.

God of the watching ones,
give us Your benediction.

God of the waiting ones,
give us Your good word for our souls.

God of the watching ones,
the waiting ones,
the slow and suffering ones,
give us Your benediction,
Your good word for our souls,
that we might rest.

God of the watching ones,
the waiting ones,
the slow and suffering ones,

and of the angels in heaven,

and of the child in the womb,

give us Your benediction,
Your good word for our souls,
that we might rest and rise
in the kindness of Your company.

~ from Celtic Daily Prayer From the Northumbria Community

Advent: 17th December

About 3 years ago our minister at the time, Andrew, introduced us to a lovely Advent liturgy. I don’t know where he found it, as I can’t find it anywhere on the net; but it continues to inspire me each Advent (the last 2 years I had it stuck on my kitchen cupboard).

Here it is:

I believe in the promise of Christmas
and the importance of celebrating it in Church. 

I believe in the God at the centre of Christmas,
whose hope for the world was imagined by the prophets.

I believe in Mary,
who sang of turning the world upside down
and who allowed her life to be disrupted by God.

I believe in Joseph whose broken heart
broke the rules to do the right thing.

I believe in the smell of the stable
I believe there is no place where God will not go.

I believe in the shepherds,
those simple ones open to hear the Angel’s song.

I believe in the Magi,
the ones outside the faith,
outside the community,
who searched out the Holy.

I believe in Jesus,
born in poverty,
soon a refugee,
raised in faith,

who lived seeking justice,
died speaking forgiveness
and rose with a love that could not be stopped.

I commit to use this season to seek out the Holy
both in God among us and in God beyond us.

I open myself to an Advent journey of great joy
that will change my life.

This Advent I have been thinking about how unlikely the Christmas story is. It’s probably occurred to you ages ago, but sometimes it takes me ages to catch on. Perhaps it’s because we are brought up with the Christmas story from primary school in constant nativity retellings (angels with sparkly tinsel: tick, shepherds with tea-towel headgear: tick, wise men with lots of bling: tick) but we just swallow the whole thing sometimes without really thinking about how mad it was.  But why the shepherds? Why a stinky stable for God’s son’s birth? Why the Wise Men? Why was the Son of God’s mother put through such indignity, anxiety and discomfort? One of the things that helps me when I have a massive doubt attack (which can be frequent) is this story – I mean if humans were going to concoct a story about how the Son of God came into the world I don’t think they’d have come up this this version; they’d have come up with a much more plausible one.

However when you think about all these unlikely elements of the Christmas story – and the liturgy above helps us get into that – it tells us a lot about God’s character and his priorities. And it makes me think about how my priorities can be very different to God’s priorities. It’s all very humbling.

With love, Vidge

 

Advent: 13th December

We’ve said that Advent marks a time of waiting. But what are we waiting for? Well, that would depend on who you ask. Most people would say that we are waiting for Christmas. For a large part of our world around us, advent is just the bit before Christmas when you do your shopping.

But clearly that has little or nothing to do with waiting. We are waiting, looking forward to the celebration of Christmas – remembering the first Christmas was the most extravagantly gracious and outrageously wonderful thing that has ever happened in the universe, the moment that the eternal God came to live with us, as one of us, sharing our humanity in every way, so that we could share our lives with Him. This is certainly worth celebrating; it is a story worth any number of tellings and retellings. But the purpose of the season of Advent when it comes around every year is to remind us that we are not just waiting to celebrate a wonderful event that happened two thousand years ago and is over and done. We are waiting because there is something  more. We are waiting for the conclusion of the story that began on that night in Bethlehem when a carpenter and his pregnant wife searched for a room to stay in. And Advent reminds us that we are waiting for something that is certainly going to happen, and might even happen today or tomorrow or the next day.

Jesus was born into this world to bring light and healing. He was born into the world to bring real life, not to tell us about an afterlife. So we, as Christians are also to be bringers of the kingdom to this earth everyday; to live lives of grace and forgiveness and kindness and compassion as Jesus did. We are called the Body of Christ because we are his hands and feet and eyes and ears in this world. Because his Spirit lives in us, through us his kingdom comes and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. We are all very imperfect raw materials, but in the hands of the great Carpenter we are his excellent workmanship, and by his grace our lives do show forth his goodness. And so the kingdom of God has already broken in upon this world.

Advent asks us to open our eyes to the world around us where a lot of people still walk in darkness. Advent invites us to open our hearts to long for a world where those things will never happen again. Advent reminds us to keep hoping for those things the world desperately needs – justice, and peace, and cleansing, and restoration – because the promise of the child who came in humility is the promise of the Son of Man who will come on the clouds in power and great glory. It’s kind of a hard thing we are called to observe, when we set out to observe a holy Advent, because it calls us to be uncomfortable, to be unsatisfied, to grieve for all that is still so sick in the world around us, to weep for the people we see who hurt others to escape their own pain or who run after pleasures and lose themselves in the process. But at the same time Advent calls us to remember that Jesus is working among us even here, even now, and that he is working through us, and that he will surely bring real justice to this creation that he loves as his own flesh.

Just like the small, bright flame of an advent candle or the candles of the advent wreath we light each week, Advent shines the light of hope into our world. We of all people in this world can face the reality of things gone wrong in our world, and of suffering without despair, because we know that the true Light has shined into our darkness and that the darkness could not overcome him.

-Gus, with thoughts taken from ‘What Are You Waiting For?’

 

Advent Post: 10th December

Today I would like to introduce you to Kevin  – he’s a vicar in South London, and he does a great blog: well I like it anyway – he’s very honest about what it’s like being a Christian in our country today. I’ve never met him but I’d like to. Please read his bog about Advent and waiting…

We as a church are in a period of waiting – just like Kevin talks of in his blog about how many people in the Bible waited for God. We are in the traditional period of Advent when we remember that we are waiting for Jesus, but we are also in a period of several months whilst we wait for our new minister to arrive. Not that I’m comparing Gill to Jesus – although I am sure she is most Christlike – but it struck me very much that this time of waiting is important. We can often see Advent as the time to get through before Christmas (and I think my children would impatiently fall into that category); do we see the next several months as a time to get through as a church before Gill comes and takes up her post as our minister? Or is it a time that is valuable in itself that we can use to find out what God is doing in us as a church during this time of waiting? During this time can we ‘wait expectantly, live hopefully, and serve faithfully’ to echo Kevin?

Love from Vidge x

PS as a special treat at the bottom of Kevin’s blog there’s also the video clip of ‘Advent in 2 minutes’ just in case you missed it at church on Sunday 2nd December – you won’t be able to get the irritating tune out of your head. Enjoy 🙂

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